


Dark Humor

by xxnadsxx



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxnadsxx/pseuds/xxnadsxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Batman had chosen to save Harvey instead of Rachel--what would happen if the White Knight had fallen? Rachel grieves and can't quite pull herself together again, but she's thirsty for revenge, and the Joker sees an opportunity to exploit her rage...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone. Thank you for coming to read my work :) This 'fic was originally finished a few years back, I wanted to put it up on archiveofourown. This is a very dark 'fic, which gets progressively darker per chapter. Just a warning, if you don't like reading dark fanfiction...Please let me know your thoughts, or give kudos! 
> 
> P.S. Emphasis, instead of italics, will be indicated by an asterisk mark, like this **. Too lazy to put the code for italics due to the limited html :)

It had been a day since his death, yet she could mourn forever.

"I'm sorry, Rachel."

It was empty everywhere. Emptiness was inside of her body, cold and pervading and relentless, flowing through her veins like poison. Emptiness filled the air around her with a stale deadness, filled even her eyes to the point that it was no longer possible to her to shed the once endless stream of tears. Her mind was empty, devoid of any logic, any reasoning or understanding as to what was happening, who the voice belonged to that spoke to her now in such soothing, desperate tones to comfort her. It was all, for a moment, wonderfully, ecstatically empty, her world for once free of all the chaos and fear and terror that had stricken her daily life; had always enveloped her in the vulnerability of her own humanity. The fact that her life had just been on the line, that she might have been—and very well *should* have been—the person to have died tonight as Gotham's most recent victim from all that bastard's madness…

"Oh, God," She moaned, her body suddenly convulsing on its own as Rachel found herself falling forward, straight into Bruce Wayne's solid, strong arms.

The tears came then, hot and piercing, a new wave of ferocious pain so strong she was sure the tears would leave scathing burn marks across her red cheeks. She was still unable to register the events in her mind; the feeling of having been restrained, tied to a chair and forced to silently count down, with her lover on the other end, the minutes before her own death. And they had both been so sure of it…both so sure she was going to be the one to die. She had accepted it. She had almost yearned for it, as sickening as it was to contemplate afterwards, because it meant keeping Harvey alive, keeping the fragile hope that had been Gotham's backbone as stable as possible amidst the destruction.

Harvey Dent had never deserved to die.

If anything, Rachel knew *she* should have been the next innocent civilian in the trail of a madman's bloody path of massacre, if it meant protecting those who truly mattered.

But something had ruined it all, and she was still here. Bruce's hand was pressed against the back of her neck as she sobbed freely into his chest, not caring about her shaken display of human weakness at this very moment. Strong, almost rough fingers—a vigilante's fingers, used more to battering than comforting—tangled in her hair, almost stroking it as she shuddered and eventually calmed, her body heaving against him as if wracking for air. It hurt, this grief, this feeling she had never quite felt before in her life. It was as if Rachel had lost a vital part of herself, as if the murdering bastard that had stolen Harvey's life had torn out her heart and sank his dagger straight into the bleeding, throbbing organ, cutting it away until there was nothing left but crumpled, torn arteries and something that could never possibly function on its own again.

Yet as her breathing slowed after what seemed an eternity, the woman's brain began to function again, just slightly enough that she realized Bruce was still holding her, his body still and frigid as a statue. She gave a deep, shuddering sigh that felt as if it wracked her entire body, biting her lip and tasting the own bitter salt of her tears as the very last of them ran down her cheeks in hot daggers. Raising her head hesitantly, she gazed up at Bruce Wayne's face—the face of the second most important man in her life—and saw the hardness of his almost coal-black eyes, realized the conflicting mass of emotions that lay beneath those ruddy irises.

"Bruce," She sighed, her voice shaking with the effort to restrain the emotion from her voice, "What happened? Why…why did you save me?"

Goddamn her voice, she thought, for all its shaking and glaring weakness. Every syllable was an incessant trembling, as she voiced the grim thoughts that had plagued her mind ever since Batman had thrown himself through the endless rows of barrels and almost flown to her, saving her from her would-be inevitable death.

Yet when he had come for her, when she had seen those black eyes, always sharp and resilient against the black of the mask, she had screamed. She had screamed and thrashed against her chair, had begged him to turn back, to go away, to go to Harvey ,to save him, 'oh god, please save him, I don't deserve this, I don't deserve this please we both know it's Harvey it has to be Harvey let me go please—'

And his eyes, the entire time they had found her face, had been uncharacteristically wide with horror. She hadn't been the only one to believe something had gone terribly wrong in those final moments. When the warehouse burst into flames, and she had shut her eyes and prayed that those fires had consumed her in her moment of panic, had even struggled and fought in Bruce's iron grip to reach out for that fire, to somehow make things right and save Harvey in the process—she knew it wasn't supposed to be like this. Her life was an accidental occurrence, and even she had not thought it deserved saving.

Those dark eyes met hers now with the same confusion that she herself felt. Rachel bit her quivering lip and fought back a heavy sigh, knowing they had all been victims yet again. Victims of another trick from the sadist that had thrown them all into the jaws of chaos, had damned them into deserting and causing the deaths of each other through choices only amusing to the insane and irredeemable. Her body, fragile and shaking to the bone, was filled with sudden adrenaline at the thought of the murdering bastard—at the thought of her hands around his neck, the thought of Batman pummeling his face to a pump, and perhaps even herself, turning the knife upon his goddamned smiling face—

"Rachel."

Bruce's voice penetrated her thoughts, brought a wave of sudden, almost alien calm to her frenzied emotions. Rachel saw his face through her blur of fresh tears, blinking them away with an inaudible curse at her damned tear ducts. His gaze was wiped free of the conflicted emotion, now, wrinkled only with a worry that cast an almost sickly pall over his hardened face. She sighed again, before forcing a smile to crack upon unwilling lips,

"Bruce…thank you for saving me. Thank you," The words felt so artificial coming from her lips, yet perhaps she could force herself, or even Bruce, to believe them if they were repeated, "But…I can't think of anything else right now, other than what's going to happen to Gotham…to everyone…because Harvey…"

'Dammit, Rachel, get a hold of yourself!'

Her foot dug hard into the floor beneath her, fists clenching and biting into skin. Rachel bit her lip and almost tasted blood with the strength of it, turning her head to the side. The guilt washed through her like a wave of nausea, guilt so strong she could feel it emanating from Bruce's body and tainting his penthouse.

"Rachel, Gotham will be all right," Bruce replied, gazing not at her, but at the window nearby, his eyes narrowed and turned so she wouldn't be able to see the emotions upon his face, "Harvey…Harvey wouldn't have wanted any of us to give in, and you know that. We all know that. Not one of us is going to back down and give into the Joker's demands. We're going to…"

He hesitated, then, as Rachel felt herself flinch at the murderer's name. Her teeth clenched; her body burned with the sudden onslaught of adrenaline and rage that threatened to consume her at that very moment.

"…We're going to avenge Harvey's murder, and bring the Joker to justice. We'll stop all the chaos. We'll get him, Rachel, I swear to you we will."

He turned towards her, suddenly, his tall frame almost towering over her, his eyes pleading now, with some other look upon his face…something all too familiar from the days when Rachel had just met Harvey, had just gotten to know the man she had so loved after Bruce himself. It was the longing in his eyes, amidst the death and destruction that they had just survived through, the longing that struck Rachel as the most disgusting thing to have happened within the hour.

"Bruce," She hissed, and then it, too, became an exhausted sigh, "Bruce…I just…"

She pressed her hands against the glass of the window before them, gazing out across the towering buildings of Gotham, reduced to almost menacingly black figures under the brilliant gold and jasper of the setting sun. Her stomach heaved again with the nauseous, contorted waves of emotion; the horrific guilt, the aching grief, the agonizing weakness, the unrestrained rage…

Rachel didn't realize her fingers had been trembling violently against the glass until Bruce's warm hand pressed against her own. How strange and cold her hand had felt just then, as stiff and dead as a corpse's. A grim, dark humor bubbled within her mind at the thought; perhaps she hadn't made it out alive, after all. Perhaps she really had died back there, and this was her ghost, speaking to Batman, grieving over the loss of her loved one. She entertained the thought for awhile until she realized the absurdity of it, and her mind struggled to focus again on the here and now, on what she would do next with her life, what she could do while Gotham was mourning the death of its one, true hero for decades and decades to come.

"Rachel, please, please get some rest here for the night. After what happened…after almost losing you, and after…after everything else, I…"

She shut her eyes, not wanting to see the look on Bruce's face as he spoke, not wanting to see his own trembling fingers upon her own. Not while they weren't Harvey's—not while Harvey's voice hadn't been her last. How unfair it was, that her voice was his finality, and his had not been the same for her…how cruel and sick it was, like a joke. Like a damned joke. God, could the rage get any worse? It twisted inside of her like a worm, as if it were eating away at all that remained of her feeble composition, nagging and horrific…

"Bruce, it's okay," She replied mechanically, snapping her eyes opened again, "Really…I'll be okay. I can't…thank you enough for helping me, really. But…"

Forcibly, Rachel pressed her other hand over his own, the dead coldness swallowing up his warm skin like a silent finality,

"I need to be alone. I need…to think, and to deal with things. And I need…"

She took in a deep, hard breath, so rapidly her lungs burned with the effort,

"I need to go back to headquarters right now. I need to think about my job. To think about Gotham, and so should you."

Bruce's eyes hardened in protest; he jerked his hand away from hers, his brows knitting over his darkened gaze, walking slightly towards her as he spoke,

"Rachel, I don't want to leave you by yourself, unprotected and hurt. The Joker just captured and tried to kill you, and who knows how long he's going to stay pent up in his little prison cell? I can't let that happen to you…not again! You need to stay here tonight, where you can fully recover, and I'm sure Harvey wanted that too, I'm sure he would want you to be taken care of!"

'God, he has to be joking.'

Rachel's eyes shut again, if only to control the sudden wave of fresh anger, stronger than ever before. Her emotions had been turbulent, unpredictable, raging like a storm since her near-death incident, and now she was fighting as hard as she could to keep it at bay, if only to keep herself from lashing out regrettably against her savior.

"Bruce, please," She replied in a near-hiss, her teeth clenched tight against tongue, "Please don't act like Harvey right now, not when no one can ever replace him. I don't really care about my safety anymore, and I doubt the Joker will be bothering me anytime soon since he's locked away."

For a moment, she almost regretted the words that came so harshly from her mouth—Bruce's gaze seemed hurt, yet a sickening sense of smugness filled her at her retaliation,

"Now…please, just let me go to headquarters. Alfred can drive me, if you want…but I need to take care of myself. I'm a big girl. I've been through hell tonight, and really, this is where I have to go back to doing my job. Hell, maybe I'll even have a chat with the Joker while I'm down there."

As she said the last sentence, she knew it had been originally intended as a joke, perhaps to lighten the mood—yet both she and Bruce's bodies grew tense at the name, and her teeth clenched again, her blood hot and sharp with the violent images in her mind. Was it possible to be so sickeningly, wantonly chaotic in her almost lusty desires to enact pain upon another human being? She would have thought it impossible before, but now, as she suddenly stared down at her hands, Rachel could only see them reddened with blood.

'Stop it, you're being delirious, you've just been through extreme trauma and you're thinking of revenge. It's a normal reaction, your anger…you just need to sleep through the night, and you need to get yourself back together. You need to fix yourself again, put things back to normal.'

Nothing would ever be normal anymore.

"Rachel, please. I can tell by your expression, you're not okay. You're not going to be okay for awhile, just let me…"

She cut off the pleading of his voice automatically, her tone curt and sharp,

"Let you what? Comfort me? Return to how things were before Harvey? Please, Bruce. There's no going back. I was going to marry him, and I wasn't going to look back…not even for you."

Rachel turned on her heel, then, her head hanging slightly; she knew the surprise that would be etched upon his face, surmising that perhaps he hadn't read her letter yet after all. Her body lurched with uncomfortable pain at the thought of her old friend's sadness—but at the same time she also felt that horrific smugness intensify, as if she were enforcing her own strength through playing at his weakness.

None of it made sense. But she was so sick now, so sick and tired…she just needed to sleep. She just needed to press rewind, to wake up, to make this all go away.

"Rachel."

The attorney turned on her heel and summoned up the remainder of her shaky, convoluted strength to propel her legs forward through the room, towards the nearest exit. Bruce's last word had been more of a submission, of a grim farewell than anything else, and she knew it. As her heels clacked in a soft staccato against the tiled floor, she welcomed the continued rage that rippled throughout her body and bloomed in her heart, gazing out at the final tendrils of the setting sun through the penthouse window.

There was nothing but smeared blood across the sky.

***

"Where to, dear? Your apartment?"

Alfred's cheery voice seemed constantly unaffected by the happenings around it, as if the only reliable thing in Gotham city. His constant calm was almost comforting to Rachel as she mentally staggered through the overwhelming changes, the tragedy, and the pain. A small, genuine smile almost prickled across her face as she replied, as smoothly as possible,

"Not this evening, Alfred. I'll be going to headquarters. I have some work to do before the day is over."

A long pause came from the front seat, where Alfred had been driving. She nestled her body against the comfortably cushioned backseat, wanting with an overwhelming urge to curl her arms around her knees and lay her head upon them in the fetal position. Like a child. Like an animal, even…so desperate for comfort amidst fear. Disgust wracked her nerves at that thought, at being so pathetically weak, and she wiped away the images, replaced them only with cold determination.

Alfred replied, then, his voice still as cheery as before, though considerably lower,

"Are you sure that's the best course of action for the night? Master Wayne said you were going there, of course, but you do need rest and recovery for the morning. Gotham needs you more than ever since the other day's events…and so do we. Even Batman needs time to recover."

'But what I want to do…is get justice the fastest way possible. Get some retribution for the dead. Something for…for Harvey.'

Rachel's eyes closed for what seemed to be the umpteenth time that evening; it was a habit she was getting, perhaps to escape from a stressful situation.

'But there's never any escape. Didn't you learn that only yesterday? It follows you, it haunts you, it hunts you…the memory, for the rest of your life. Or at least until you can do something about it.'

"Ms. Dawes?"

Rachel took a breath and opened her eyes, gazing into Alfred's own worried pair through the rear-view mirror. Her fingers clenched and unclenched against her lap.

"Alfred, thank you for the concern. But Batman overtaxes himself…and I know how much I can handle. I'm not going to do anything…just talk. Nothing more."

Alfred's eyes hardened, if that were at all possible for his gentle features. Rachel knew he could read her even better than Bruce, perhaps because of his years of experience, encompassing hardships and moments of perseverance that she would be unable to even think of, yet alone see herself experiencing in her near future. He would know she was seeking an encounter with the Joker, some interrogation time alone while he was imprisoned, and she didn't even need to voice her intent. Alfred could see it all in her expression, her demeanor, as if she were a book to be consistently laid open for his reading pleasure.

Again, the thought of her own horrific vulnerability; of being physically, mentally weak, surrounded by almost supernaturally strong criminals and vigilantes…it brought back the nausea in her gut, the sickening sensation of guilt that was so strong it could only be accompanied by a jarring pain. Always the mouse amidst the hungry cats. The prey. The bait.

"Keep in mind, if it is the Joker you seek to interrogate, to even get a scrap of information out of…he will be unyielding. He is a man out only for seeing others suffer, Ms. Dawes, just as you were recently subject to. I believe only encountering him again will lead to frustration, anger…anything but what you may wish for."

"I just want to talk to him, Alfred…just…"

Her words trailed; she clenched the soft leather cushioning of the backseat, her nails scraping against its surface, unable to decipher any logic in her intentions or compulsion to interrogate the criminal who Batman couldn't even truly crack. All Rachel knew was that her emotions; her raw, hurt, ravaged emotions, were possessing her, pushing her forward to this madman, to see how he really played with his victims, to get into his mind. It was seemingly impossible, yet…God, if she could look into the eyes of Harvey's killer, to know he would be locked up in his little cell forever, suffering solitude, that the horror was finally over, that Harvey was the last person he managed to…

As if he could read her mind, Alfred nodded, nothing but sympathy and understanding in his almost heavy voice,

"Of course, Rachel. I understand completely."

***

She had Alfred drop her off a few blocks before the station; she needed the walk, and she needed it badly. Rachel hadn't been in fresh, actual air of the outside world since the incident yesterday night—well, not mentally, at least, not amidst her horror and panicked state of mind as Batman had pulled her out of harm's way and taken her directly to the hospital, and then, ignoring any arguments on her part, straight to his penthouse for complete recovery. It was a sick joke, the way Bruce thought he could still command certain aspects of her life—they way he would hoist her around at times, like she was some delicate little china doll, something of glass in a world of hard, unforgiving surfaces, waiting to be shattered the moment he'd turn his head in the opposite direction.

But she wasn't so completely helpless. She was still on her two feet at this moment, still standing, still walking resolutely forward (and quite literally) since the death of her lover. Of course, it still stung; of course, her mind was reduced to shambles at the moment, and she was being pulled towards the police station just for the sake of relishing those sweet victorious emotions that would come with seeing the Joker imprisoned…but it would only help. It would only get better, wouldn't it, now that the greatest tragedy that could have possibly hit Gotham had indeed happened, and anything more was unimaginable?

It could only get better after things got worse. Alfred had said something like that to her before, and she was repeating it now as a silent mantra in her head. The station would be coming up soon, and she raised her head at the thought; she couldn't let them see her weak, vulnerable, not for one moment. Not when she wanted to interrogate the Joker. They would think she'd be incapable of it, still recovering, her mind still in the throes of chaos and panic from losing him…

'Shut up and concentrate. You're at the doors.'

Yes, she would be fine. She would be completely—

"Oh my God."

Everything was burning.

The police headquarters was reduced to a mass of rubble and debris, as if it had imploded in on itself, the rustic building a hilltop of brick in uneven places, traces of roaring, seething fire and destruction still raging in others. Her knees buckled beneath her slacks, her hand clutched toward the nearest rail of the stairway before the crumbling building, breath short and frantic in utter disbelief. What had happened? What was going on? What…

A shower of paper fluttered amidst the debris before her—and as she bent forward, she recognized them as cards. Countless cards buried amidst brick and rubble, imbued with the face she so despised, the face she hated, the face that made bile rise to her throat and that murderous instinct pump in her veins yet again. Pushing away her nausea, her trembling, she made her way across the stairs and through the nearly unhinged doors.

The explosion had been recent; perhaps an hour ago, perhaps even less. She was coughing against an onslaught of thick, churning smoke and stepping across more and more fallen brick and wood and debris, making her way through what used to be the solid remnants of headquarters, traversing across vacated jail cells, some spattered with rapidly drying blood. She wondered, her heart pulsing heavily against her ears, whether the bastard was still here, whether he had escaped, whether this had all been his doing in the first place.

Yet she knew it was. Who else would be so disgusting, so heartless? Forcing back another potentially loud cough against the smoke, Rachel stalked across a pathway of familiar bodies tangled beneath her—officers caught in the explosion, their faces mangled and frozen still in death; some wide-eyed, some as if they were sleeping, some wounded and disfigured. The source of the explosion came up soon enough—she bit her lip and covered her mouth, fighting the fresh wave of bile and nausea at the sight of the bloated-looking former prisoner, his stomach torn completely open, innards on display and slashed in a bloody red, dripping mess for all the world to see. God, the smell, the thickness of his blood…could a human actually bleed *so* much?

Her heels were slick against the ever-growing red pool of the man's insides, and at first she was afraid she would slip into the sea of bloody red, struggle and drown in it all. A dark, humorous streak followed that thought, and she had the sickening urge to laugh—desperation against her situation, which only seemed to grow worse and worse. If he was still here…

'If he's still here, I'm going to see him. And maybe he can finish the job he had intended by wiring me up in the first place. The job that ended the way it wasn't supposed to end. Maybe then it will be fair this way. Or maybe…maybe I could avenge Harvey…'

That thought seemed funnier than that of drowning. She actually fought the conscious urge to laugh; yet it was a bitter chuckle, knowing her efforts would be futile.

But how could she live with herself not even trying?

How could she live with herself at all anymore?

Rachel pushed all thoughts aside at the sight of a familiar desk nearby—*her* desk, where she knew some of Harvey's possessions had been stored before…the incident. She quickly ran towards it, a sense of relief flooding her veins for once in these past two horrific days. With a jerk of the cabinet, Rachel rummaged through desperately, hissing rapid expletives beneath her breath in frustration as she searched, and finally pulled out one of Harvey's pistols, which she knew to still be loaded.

'At least I'll be armed before I die.'

But there could be no one here. The building was relatively empty, and she knew the firemen and hospital trucks would arrive soon enough. A destroyed headquarters would not go unnoticed, and the bastard would have run like a dog with his tail between his legs, slobbering his filth all over anyone who crossed his path. She turned on her heel, knowing the silence could only mean that he was not there after all—

And then a hideously familiar cackle rang just behind her tensed body, and Rachel stood frozen in place.

There was a scream—a man's scream, also familiar, yet contorted, twisted in what could only be incredible pain…

'No. Not again. This needs to stop!'

Without thinking, her feet sprang forward, lunging for the nearest room in which the incessant, high-pitched, shrieking laughter ensued. Rachel had no time to consider what she was getting herself into, what she would find, what her chances even were of coming out of this alive.

The door to the interrogation room was wide open, and it was waiting for her.

She stepped through.


	2. Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rachel has a conversation with a murderer.

The former assistant District Attorney was tense and poised as she readied herself for what lay within the interrogation room. Sweat creased her palms, lined her forehead with the telltale signs of human nerves—yet she couldn't afford to give into that now. It was too late to go back, propelled by the violent emotions in her body, by her desire to exact whatever she could upon the mad man before he would undoubtedly overpower her, or at least to try and bring some justice to Harvey's death.

'You're an idiot, Rachel. You're a damned idiot.'

But she knew that. If she hadn't been an idiot, she would have never befriended the Batman or nearly married the District Attorney of Gotham City in the first place. Without another beat, as the hideous chuckling continued, the screams she had just heard reduced to a loud, disjointed gurgling, Rachel dove through the door, her gun in hand, praying he was at least alone—

Rachel didn't expect to see the crumpled body of Lau in the hands of the smirking clown as she entered, cradling him as tenderly as if he were a child. Her body froze in terror at the sight; thin dribbles of blood ran down Lau's slender throat, the only true indication of any assault, yet his slanted eyes were wide and rolled upwards in cold, cruel death. His skin was already pale and ashen beneath the sharp, fluorescent lights, and for a sickening moment Rachel could imagine Lau's body beneath the ground, already crawling with maggots, already destroyed in its fleeting mortality…

She almost forgot about the piercing gaze of the man cradling the dead body against him. It was only when he uttered a low, almost guttural purr of greeting from the depths of his throat, discarding Lau's body between them as he pulled himself to his feet that she truly realized who stood before her. It was Harvey's murderer she was facing—and, in a way, her own.

The bottomless eyes watched her with pure pleasure as she mirrored his gaze, echoed by the suddenly shrill, high-pitched laughter from his heavily scarred, cracked orifice. It wasn't even a mouth, couldn't even merit to be compared to one in its gashed, inhuman leer, the stitching constantly crackling as if it would give way and gush a downpour of blood without any warning.

"Why helloooo, beautiful! Or should I call you Mrs. Dent? It seems you're a little late for our date, and I've been expecting you."

Rachel gasped at the man's shameless, crooning mockery, her fingers clutching the pistol tight and pointing the weapon straight at him,

"Shut up!"

The Joker's eyes widened for a fraction of a second at the weapon that seemingly came from thin air, before scarred lips pulled back from yellow teeth in another shrill, high-pitched cackle of amusement. As he laughed, he kicked the dead body at his feet carelessly to the side like a heap of unwanted garbage, before beginning to walk coolly forward towards her, as if she were not harboring a weapon and pointing it menacingly towards him.

"Stand back," She cried, her eyes narrowing towards the Joker in dark revulsion. The clown seemed to make a show of contemplating her words, placing his hand beneath his chin and raising his brows, yet then he shook his green mane wildly and grinned,

"No, no, no, no, no…*that* wouldn't be the right way to entertain my pretty little guest! Besides, are you really sure you know how to point that thing?"

His voice became lower then, almost a conspiratorial whisper, as he crossed his arms, the grin never fading from his smug, scarred lips,

"Because I think you're very off...shooting me wouldn't kill those responsible, you know."

As he spoke, he began to form a slow circle around the large interrogation room; Rachel moved as well, pulling herself away from him with each step, not wanting to make him think he could get any closer to her.

'He's lying,' Her mind frantically hissed amidst the sudden confusion, 'don't believe him for a second, why should you?'

"You're a liar," Rachel replied with a shaking voice, cocking the weapon in her hands and watching as Joker actually jumped up slightly at the sound,

"Oh, no, me?! I'm anything but that! You see, dear Rachel, I'm the most honest guy in Gotham at this very moment, what with...our little white Knight put out of *commission.*"

She was quiet; her body seethed with the rage she had felt before, though diluted by a trembling in her breast; something akin to fear, yet not quite. She had never actually shot at someone before, especially not in such a tense situation, and she didn't know if she would be able to aim properly at one of the Joker's vital areas while he was prancing around her in a circle, taunting her with his lies.

But, her mind then contradicted itself darkly, What if he isn't lying? What if...

As if able to read her thoughts, he nodded quickly, holding his hands out as if he were an innocent child and hadn't just killed the man lying inert between them. His knife glinted against the fluorescent light, still red and caked with blood, toted as if it were a harmless instrument by the madman,

"You see, Rachel--can I call you Rachel, since Mrs. Dent doesn't really work anymore?—"

She flinched, a cry of mottled rage twisting in her throat, and Joker nodded again, holding his hands out before himself defensively,

"Rachel. While you and your, uh...*squeeze* were out in that life or death situation, I was right here, in my little jail cell, wasting away! I didn't kidnap you or Harvey, how could I when I was right *here*?"

He gestured towards the wide expanse of the room they were in, still nodding in silent encouragement, as if to reinforce his words that seemed to drip with venom in Rachel's eyes, "How could I have possibly been the one to do any sort of harm to you and Harvey, when I don't even have plans?"

"It doesn't matter!" She retaliated, her voice an angry cry, yet shakier than she had wanted it to be, "Harvey's dead, and they were your men, don't try to play your games with me!"

"Oh, but I'm not playing any games, I promise you," He replied smoothly, a giggle at the edge of his words, his face cocked to the side as if he were an innocent boy, "If I were here, I couldn't have given any orders out to anyone. Gordon and his...ah, men," He gestured outside, towards what Rachel had seen to be the rows of mangled bodies, "Made sure of that. Morrone's men were the ones to go after your Harvey, and they were the ones to wire him to the explosives, while you two exchanged vows of love and comfort before your final moments toge—"

"Shut up!" Her voice was so loud her own ears rang with the ferocity of it; the Joker jumped backwards in mock surprise, before chuckling again, grabbing at his sides, "You always were feisty, beautiful, and that's what I've liked about you. You see, I'm not surprised you were the one to pull through this and come after me with a gun, when I could easily take your cute little pistol out of your hands and carve you up like a pumpkin within seconds if I wanted to,"

His mouth curled into a sinister leer, then, and the savage amusement in Joker's eyes at his words chilled Rachel's spine,

"But I like you. I've been watching you, trying to...figure out exactly what it is that attracts the two most powerful men in Gotham to you, and I found the predicament...irresistible, myself. You're not nearly as strong as you pretend to be, and that strikes me as incredibly funny! Why a girl like you, a beautiful girl, Harvey's squeeze, Batman's little object of desire…would still take on a job as ugly as D.A. assistant, and risk her life enforcing stupid little morals and high values and 'putting the bad guys away'…well, it doesn't make any sense! It's crazy business, the way you people work, thinking you can lock away every corrupted person in Gotham when we're all corrupted, even the people you trust the most, when even your little Batman turns his tail on you after finally seeing you as what you are, and that's bait—"

Rachel's fingers trembled on the trigger, her eyes sharp with tears of anger. What she would give to lunge at this man right now, to tear at him with nail and limb and every part of her body, to shoot him full of bullet holes and never look back. What she would give to wipe off that damned smirk on his face, to make sense of his little attempt at psychiatrist analysis in the face of potential death.

'But vengeance doesn't equal justice…what do I want from this? From hurting him? Think, get a hold of yourself, get a hold of your logic!'

"Batman's a better man than you or Morrone," She interjected, her voice trembling, "And he's coming right now to help me, and to put you where you belong!"

Another howling cackle, and he leered at her again, his black eyes seeming to bore straight into her soul, the red smile genuine beneath the scars and lipstick,

"Is that what you *really* think?"

Rachel gasped. During their tense circling across the room, the Joker had managed to come dangerously close towards the heavy door that closed the interrogation room. He could slip right through if he wanted to, and she would have to chase him, would have to fire at him as best as she could...she didn't know if she could even get a shot at him from his distance. Her mind numbed and her breath cursed violently at the realization, and he turned around and gazed at the door in mock surprise and then, chuckling, shook his head.

"I know you think I'm a coward, but...I assure you, I'm not. I'd prefer to take this little encounter...*head-on*."

As he said this, he turned with surprising, almost feline agility and twisted the door shut, wrenching the nearest chair beneath the handle. Rachel's heart lurched sickeningly against her chest despite herself, as her situation just grew more urgent, a little more hopeless. A giggle bubbling in the depths of his throat, the Joker licked his lips and hovered towards her, so close that her heart leapt again in her body, pumped quickly with heated adrenaline. She raised the gun again, backing up so that he was always a good few inches away from her, yet soon enough her back hit against the surface of the metal table behind her, and she winced at the pain of its slightly sharp edge against her body. If she turned towards the table's side in an effort to get further away, she didn't know what he was capable of doing the moment she turned her head. He could kill her with one swipe of his knife at this point, break her artery within less than a breath's heightened panic, reducing her to a peaceful slumber…

The thought was almost grimly tempting, and her lip curled in disgust at her own mind's yearning.

"Now that we're a bit more…*intimate*," The Joker whispered, his hot, rancid breath filling her nostrils and almost overpowering her as he hovered menacingly close—too close for comfort, for anything but panic—"I'd like to seriously apologize for the loss of your, ah…loved one. Gotham won't be able to stand on its two feet anymore, will it? All the people who thought they were strong, that they were powerful, will crumble…and chaos will reign. And all because Batman messed up his priorities—if anyone is to blame, blame it on the Bat!"

His voice was suddenly an octave higher as he practically screamed the last of the sentence; Rachel pressed herself back against the table's sharp, dagger-like surface, her back curling inward, glaring at his chuckling, hysterical face, the face caked with war paint, so savage and inhuman in all its scarred mirth. All this monster did was laugh at her pain, at her confusion, with his black hole of a mocking mouth devouring any remote humanity around him, until everything bled like his scars, until everything was irreparable. This man was one of those men that she realized could never be bargained with, even after having told Bruce once a long, long time ago that everyone was a good person, everyone deserved their own justice.

Maybe the man before her didn't even count as a human being. And maybe the revulsion curling in her throat, throbbing in her head and heart and hands, was the only right thing to feel. Did the Joker deserve humanity? Harvey had deserved it, hadn't he? And look where he was now…

"Why do you keep saying that?!" She finally replied in rising ire, the gun shaking ferociously in her hands, her teeth clenching in vicious restraint not to force a bullet straight through this man's skull.

The Joker gazed at her finger upon the trigger, his eyes narrowed with an almost smug grin upon his features. The makeup was caked and smearing across the lower half of his face, patches of flesh-colored skin contrasting sharply with chalk-white. Yet he still seemed so irrevocably inhuman, nothing more than an animal in his movements, in the casual flick of his tongue across his lips, in the way in which he relentlessly played with her.

'He's the cat with blood-stained teeth…and I'm always the mouse.'

Her lips tightened and she kept her eyes narrowed as he watched her, gazing straight at her resolute face, as if admiring some pretty object with appraising eyes,

"I'm only telling the truth, beautiful. Batman caused Harvey's death, more than anyone could have. You see…Batman didn't mean to come help you that night. Don't you see the guilt in his eyes whenever he tries to look at you, beside all that…manly, disgusting lust? The powerful always go for the powerful in this city, always…eat the weaker of the prey, and this was no exception. You see…"

As he spoke, he almost casually pulled himself across the other half of the table near where Rachel had been standing, sitting upon the glossy surface as if he were dictating something as frivolous as the weather,

"Morrone's men…when they kidnapped you two. They, ah…switched the addresses in which you lovebirds were located. Batman had to make his choice, and, originally, he didn't choose you to save!" Another high-pitched giggle from his lips as he uttered the horrific truth, and Rachel actually fought the urge to pull her hands over her ears, as she pushed herself forcefully to the side, away from the monster's towering frame. Defiantly, he scooted towards her, black-ringed eyes gleaming their self-righteousness as he spoke, apathetic as to how the words stung,

"Batman chose power over love…over your worth. Apparently, you weren't worth anything at all to Gotham's, ah…survival. You weren't nearly as important as your little husband-to-be, at least, not in Batman's eyes. No, he wanted to make sure he was able to wring the neck of every criminal instead of saving his dearest friend. And, even to me, that's hurtful! To be honest…"

He leaned even closer, the black abyss of his irises as if she were staring into two bottomless holes,

"When I heard, I expected him to go to save you! Of course, then he would have really saved Harvey, and maybe he wouldn't have been as guilty, knowing that Gotham would be okay, and you, the little…lover of two, would have been gone, like the pawn you always were—"

"Stop it!"

Without even thinking, Rachel pressed the gun straight against the Joker's forehead. For an instant, bewilderment etched its way across his savage features; then he cackled again giddy and erratic, nearly doubling over with laughter too intense for his thin frame. The girl kept the gun steady, her body tensed with the disturbed shock that always accompanied the peal of laughter after any tense or painful situation the bastard encountered—had she ever seen a criminal like this, who took the most horrific of human emotions, fear and pain, and twisted them into pure mirth?

Did he fear anything?

"Oh, I love this, I love this so much! I'm so glad you were the one to come through, after all, because this is just too much fun! I would have never thought you'd come after me, with the intent to kill me…when even the Batman himself doesn't even kill. Maybe we're more, ah…made for one another than you once thought, Rachel, thinking you were better than all the criminals you've helped Dent put to jail, thinking you got some sort of self-worth and satisfaction from all of it, hmm? But to know now that Batman would have betrayed you, that your closest associates are working for Morrone…how does it feel to have no one to trust, not even yourself any longer? When you wish you were the one to have died in place of poor Harvey!"

Her fingers were shaking so violently then that the entire gun itself trembled erratically against Joker's forehead. How easily she could penetrate his skin, now, could put a bullet through his flesh and end it all. How quickly she could end the horrific laughter, bring his taunting to silence within minutes, avenge Harvey and put Gotham's threat and the source of all her recent nightmares to oblivion...

'But he's not directly responsible for Harvey's death, is he? You would kill a guilty man for justice, but not guilty for the crime you wanted to avenge...  
What's the difference between vengeance and justice? What did I say to Bruce before, when his parents were killed?'

What had happened to those values of self-righteousness? To order? To her sense of justice?

He was staring at her as always, the black eyes boring into her, violating her more forcefully than any physical touch. Rachel could feel his hot breath on her neck, her cheek, as she contemplated just how killing the monster would feel at that moment, as she yearned for it. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed up defiantly at his own, and she saw in his only the empty, lusting smirk of a predator, fueled by pure instinct and carnal thirst. He thirsted for blood; he thirsted for flesh--that was all that moved him, all that could ever move him. What were years of criminal analysis and sympathy for all when it came to this…thing? What human rule applied to him, besides her own goddamned desire to put him to justice?

She wanted to spit at him, she wanted to lunge and hurt him for hurting Harvey, she wanted to shoot—God, how she ached to shoot!

'Harvey wouldn't do this if I had died. Harvey would have remained strong…Harvey would have known how to move on. Harvey…'

"Yes," She murmured quietly, so quietly it would have gone unheard by anyone but the monster before her.

"Oh?" The man's brows rose against his painted face as he cupped his ear, straining to hear, pressing his forehead even harder against the tip of her pistol, "What was that?"

"I should have died instead of Harvey," She replied, uncaring that she was revealing such thoughts to the Joker, as she was sure at that moment she would pull the trigger, every fabric in her being wanting this retribution to quell the horrible, aching pain inside of her,

"Everyone knows that. But maybe killing you will put the balance back? Maybe it will bring justice? With the main defender of Gotham gone, and the main source of Gotham's destruction gone..."

A wide, twisted smile played from ear-to-ear across the clown's face as he nodded, chuckling with a hardened tone to his voice, like a rabid, snarling dog, the stitches rippling with scarlet skin in a beast's bloodied leer.

"Now you're seeing things the way they really are. It's not about order, beautiful, it's about chaos...it's about anarchy. I don't make plans, I ruin them, I chase things and destroy them...like a dog! And the only people who can make it in Gotham are the ones that destroy. This city is a cesspool, a breeding ground for the corrupt and the damned. And the only way to rule this place, the only absolute, is chaos. So..."

He repositioned her gun tip, pressing it into his scarred mouth, grinning as it settled against the inside of his cheek. Rachel's heart pumped with both toxic dread and horrific desire; she couldn't think besides the horrible surge of adrenaline, the sickening urge to pull, to end, to destroy. And the source, the lone object of all of her anger and hatred and pain all these never-ending, fear-stricken days was standing before her, offering her a chance to rid the world of him.

"Do it," He purred demurely against the muffled tone of his gun-filled mouth, "Do what you've come here to do, what you've wanted to do all along. Upset the established order. Don't be so self-sacrificing...take what you want. *Kill me.* "

She tensed, her fingers heavy on the trigger. Just one squeeze...that's it...her gun was cocked, she could look away...she shut her eyes tight, feeling the weight of his jaw pressing heavily against Harvey's pistol. Harvey's pistol. What a fitting end.

"Do it," He hissed almost impatiently, a chuckle bubbling from deep within him, rippling across the weapon in its gruesomely amused strength, "Do it, come on, come on, kill me...kill me, KILL ME!"

As her fingers acted, her eyes shut tight—and a face, an all-too familiar, all too painfully real face became the dominant image in her mind—a blonde, smiling face, with kind eyes and a strong, reassuring smile…the skin suddenly trickling, oozing down across the thick bones like liquid, the muscles and tissues exposed, torn away layer by layer into burning, bleeding pustules and ash and dust, the eyes the last distinguishable thing as the jaw bone disconnected, covered entirely in flame, the fire eating away at the thick strands of hair, eating away at every remaining distinguishable feature—the ears, the nose, the cheeks, eating and eating until there was nothing at all but burnt black bone and ashy remnants and crawling maggots, and 'stop it, stop it, stop it, stop hurting the man I love—'

'Harvey!'

She pulled the trigger.

The bullet pierced the air like a knife through butter, quick as a blur—

Yet it landed in thick, black armor, no trace of the monstrous flesh it had been so close to hitting, to killing, to ending. Black eyes stared down at her, eyes so much like those that had just bored into her with merciless insanity. But Batman was there, Batman was clutching with brute force at the gun in her hands, pulling it forcefully from her grip as if she were the criminal, sending it clattering upon the ground, as useless now as Lau's dead, frigid body it had pressed itself against in its descent. She fell to her knees, then, unable to comprehend what had just happened—gazing up at the black figure before her, her eyes straining to see behind him, to see any remaining sign of the monster who had seemingly disappeared right into thin air…

"The Joker fled as soon as I arrived—you fainted, and he was dragging you across the floor, laughing…"

The raspy, phony voice was apathetic as ever around the wave of policemen that engulfed them in a sea of spiraling blue, yet she could sense the horror in his voice, the powerlessness of perhaps having one day come too late. Yet she couldn't think; her breath was ragged, her body was trembling, all she could think of was how close she had been, how incredibly close…

"Take me home, Bruce," She whispered, so low even the Batman strained to her hear, "Just take me home. I don't want to hear it, just let me rest."

The black figure hesitated; then, slowly, the stiff head nodded once, twice. Strong hands pulled her up by her arm, and she walked herself towards the door, ignoring the questions that piled themselves upon her in torrents from the policemen who had noticed her, her mind throbbing viciously and painfully with the taxing encounter she had just survived through.

Survived?

She hadn't been a victim, at least, not while conscious; she had been the attacker, the assaulter, she had been the one to threaten, to nearly kill—yet Batman still held her in his tight grip just outside of the building, disappearing with her into the blackness of nightfall. Batman still placed her securely in her apartment room, through the unlocked window, watching her resolutely with his masked face as she double checked the deadbolt and pulled herself quietly into her bed sheets, seeking refuge even from his prying eyes.

Maybe vigilantes were self-justified. Maybe they were never criminals because they never saw themselves as such. But the police wanted the Batman. The police wanted the Joker.

What was the difference between justice and vengeance?

Her body hurt beneath the sheets, felt abused and hot and crooked. She pulled off layers of restrictive clothing, too fitful to care for a shower for one night, to mind the fact that her clothing was strewn across the floor with case files and papers and other assorted personal items. As Rachel struggled to fight herself into a fitful sleep, she didn't see the card slide from the discarded pocket of her slacks. The image of a doubled-over black Joker leered from its papery surface as she forced her eyes shut, covered with bloodied, sloppy scrawl:

Murderer.


	3. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting with an ex-lover, and a threat.

Morning came, a bleeding womb against the horizon of Gotham, penetrating Rachel's eyelids with its pulsing, silent scream and beckoning her into reality.

Morning in Gotham was always a blessing and a curse. A blessing for its people, because the criminals and fear-mongering crooked emptied the streets for a chance to live a fearless day; a curse, because those very same people were doomed to repeat the cycle another day. It wasn't the same for her, though—it was never the same, now that Harvey was gone. Rachel didn't have fear anymore, that same mortal fear that accompanied the feeling of weakness when overshadowed by one's enemy; she had emptiness, she had desperation.

Anger was stronger than fear. And sometimes, anger could eradicate it completely.

It was the first emotion that filled her as she woke up; mainly because, despite the grogginess and the temporary peaceful null that had invaded her mind in her dreamless slumber, she came to a rude awakening. Stretching sore muscles nimbly against her creaking mattress, she pulled herself to sitting position and groaned slightly as she readjusted the jagged-toothed blinds that assaulted her with rays of dawn's burning light to shut completely again, rendering her room a dim cradle of comfort, if just for a few minutes more.

She smoothed back her disheveled locks, feeling a bit dirty now that her mind was cleared from the other night's panic that she hadn't taken her nightly shower. As the girl hoisted herself from her creaking bed, with its groan of protest mirroring her own, she hopped surprisingly nimbly towards her bathroom, lathering and scrubbing and cleaning away as much of the week's filth and grime and sickness as she could. Rachel spent a long hour against the penetrating heat of the shower as it poured upon her bare skin, rubbing the soap so forcefully against her porcelain flesh that it caused her pain, her limbs pink and softened and nearly bruised when she was finished with her savage routine and reduced the scalding water to a lazy drip. No doubt a few bruises would form upon her delicate frame; she welcomed it, really, because she felt much, much cleaner now she had washed away any trace of the recent past.

Surveying her raw fingers quickly as she threw a towel about her slight frame and went to scour her closet for a black ensemble, Rachel was satisfied to see her turned palms a bright, beet red—not from blood, but from innocence, from purity. She almost felt completely clean, as if she had never imagined them just as red with another's blood.

*Almost.*

Satisfied with a simple black knee-length dress and heels, Rachel watched herself briefly in the mirror, at the reflection she had not seen since the incidents that had passed. Harvey's funeral was today—yet as she gazed at her own image, she felt as if they had missed another corpse in all the District Attorney's importance. She had gotten thinner these past few days—her cheeks were sunken, her eyes thick with bags that carried the weight of what she had just suffered through, her exposed collarbones sharp and laced with an age that did not come with physical passing, but the anguish and wearing of the mind. She still looked substantially the same, of course; no bruises or scars on her face, no burn marks to mar her delicate, easy breakable skin, nothing to show the telltale signs of loss, assault, nearly dying countless times within a devastatingly short time frame.

But who needed telltale signs when the most vital were in the most important part of her body itself—her mind?

For an instant, she envisioned herself as Harvey would have been, her face mangled and disfigured beyond recognition; muscles exposed and ugly in their burnt, oozing hideousness, bleeding red and purple and puss across the garbled flesh, the protruding bones from beneath the singed black layers of skin that were once so pristine and pretty, sharp and almost monstrous as they stuck from her cheeks, her arms, her constantly smiling, burned away face—

'Let's put a smile on that face!'

Harvey Dent will always smile, now.

"No!" She hissed, and before she knew it she was doubled over, clutching at her bent body as if something had impaled her, sharp and relentless, straight through the chest to her heart.

Rachel forcefully straightened her scrunched-up face, the unmistakable fear in her eyes that had never died away from the days prior. She wouldn't harbor that fear anymore—she couldn't. She would bury it. She would destroy it, just as everything dear to her had been destroyed. It was time to move on. It was time for Gotham to move on.

With a last, apathetic stare into the gleaming mirror, Rachel turned on her heel and began to clean the mess upon her floor, strewn carelessly across the carpet—across her conscience. Layers of clothing and files she smoothed and separated, discarding the former for cleaning, the latter for the soon-to-be newly rebuilt headquarters. It was an empty distraction, for a few solid minutes of drowning out the world—bringing back the humdrum order of placement, logic, organization.

Then she found the curled playing card that nearly formed a paper-cut along her trembling hand.

Murderer.

With a sudden, shuddering gasp, her eyes widened at the single accusing word—jaggedly written, its scarlet, caked appearance obviously the product of dried blood. The Joker leered at her from its black-faced portrait, inanimate, unmoving, inhuman. Bile tickled her throat and the haze of remaining fatigue upon her body seemed to melt away, replacing itself with the dormant anger she had momentarily been able to fight down with the normalcy of her morning routine.

Normalcy. What a fleeting fantasy.

But no…she couldn't let this get to her. She just couldn't. Sharp tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, her emotions spilling to life through the medium of her stunned body. She wiped them away with so much force her eyes felt raw as she rubbed them, flicking the card against the tabletop and fumbling angrily across the floor, to her kitchen countertop, through the disheveled cabinets for an ashtray.

Pulling a lighter in tow, she threw the ashtray down so forcefully her shaking hands nearly chipped at the delicate glass, and thrust the card rapidly against the tray's hollow surface.

Without a second thought, she flipped the lighter on and set the corner of the card on fire, watching it curl up as the flames spread to lick its dirtied surface, strong and hungry and devouring. A sick pleasure bubbled within her as she watched the Joker's face alight with flames, black and crisp and melting away as the entire card slowly burned, slowly yet surely curled in on itself like a withering leaf.

'Burning, just like Harvey burned.'

She watched the Joker burn into nothing on the papery surface, and for a quick moment, her aching heart soared.

It was then that the doorbell rang.

As Rachel watched the lower half of the card begin to slowly dissolve into an ashy nothingness, the ringing continued, loud and shrill and demanding. Her eyes widened as she heard the familiar voice outside her apartment door, wrought with what could only be worry—a constant tone of voice whenever he spoke to her now, it seemed. Bruce was practically pounding on the door, now, and Rachel noticed the sharp, almost overpowering smell of smoke coming from her tray was enough to pervade the doorway and attract the attention of others.

"Bruce?!"

"Rachel! Rachel, what's happening?"

"Ah—nothing, nothing! I was just…um…smoking…"

She winced at her excuse, having never picked up a cigarette in her short years of life and finding it a poor thing to say in her defense. Quickly, she pulled herself to her feet and threw the ashtray off the table, watching with a silent curse as it, and the burning card, skidded to the floor to shatter and ignite a corner of her carpet in miniature flames. Rachel stomped out the remainders of the fire with her heel, yet the broken glass covered the now ugly black mark that charred her white carpet. She winced as the pounding continued.

"Okay, okay! I'm coming!"

Practically running to her door for fear it would collapse, Rachel threw the bolt aside and leapt out of the way as it flew open, her childhood friend standing on the other end, his eyes hard with panic which he now frantically struggled to cover with the tightest smile he could offer her.

"Since when did you smoke, Rachel? Even I can't stand the stuff."

Rachel mirrored his tight smile with one of her own, though naturally more relaxed. She always thought she had been the more demure and subtle of the two,

"Ever since this week turned into a living hell and insisted I be the constant plaything of the Devil himself, that's when. What brings you to my apartment?"

Still standing in the doorway, the unmasked vigilante stood still for a moment, holding out his hands and furrowing his thick brows incredulously,

"What, and you aren't even going to invite me in to sit down? Coffee, even?"

Despite the recent emotional turbulence her body had been subjugated to, Rachel still found it difficult to fight back a grin. She forcefully blocked out the memories of the night before as she gazed up at Bruce's familiar, comforting frame, numbing her pain away with their timeless banter,

"You know I don't have my very own Alfred installed here. I make even instant inedible…you should know, after all, you've tried it before."

As she walked across the room, motioning for him to sit at the kitchen table, Bruce nodded in silent agreement, a grin playing on his own lips which she saw from her corner of her eye. She skirted the table with carefully concealed skittishness, hoping he wouldn't notice the very recent char marks against her once immaculate carpet—yet he did anyway, God damn him and his microscopic vision.

"Since when did you add the interpretive glass sculpture over there?" He asked smoothly, pointing at the broken remnants of the ashtray, "Or did you not know how to properly extinguish your first cigarette?"

Rachel bit her lip. She pulled herself dismissively into a seat, resting her weary head on her hands, elbows grinding against the surface of the table,

"It was an accident. You startled me when you were pounding on the door like a madman at approximately eight thirty in the morning, you know."

This was enough to draw the billionaire's prying eyes from the charred card to her own, his gaze creased with remorse,

"You had me worried for a second when you weren't answering. I…I've been worrying a lot lately, you know that."

Rachel studied him for a moment, surveying the hardened man that was the mirror image of her once-childhood friend and love. She gazed at his statuesque frame, his dark eyes set so perfectly within the sockets that they, too, would have appeared emotionless, frigid, if it weren't for the constant burning sentiments that always gushed out at her whenever he gazed straight at her own eyes. There was no doubt at all that he still harbored feelings for her, though all hers had dwindled, died out as soon as 

Harvey had. And so she found she couldn't blame him for all the troubles she had caused him in living, after all, and the ensuing bitterness of the situation made her sigh and pat the nearby chair to invite him to take a seat.

"It's been a long, long week, Bruce. Believe me…I know all too well now how much Gotham and its people can worry."

Bruce nodded at her words, sitting obligingly near her hunched frame, his eyes desperately piercing her own again that heavy morning. It was funny how in the daylight Rachel could see nothing of Batman in that gaze—no familiar hardness, no extreme apathy to the point of being cold and cruel. It was only in his poise, in his practiced, stiff posture, that the true inert, hardened nature of the Batman was evident without the mask and the night to guard him, shift him like clay into a vicious, intimidating creature. She could see, for once, how his criminals, how everyday people would be capable of fearing him…yet for her to have such fear was in itself completely impossible. Especially with the undiluted caring in his eyes as she saw them now.

"Rachel. Are you…"

Bruce shifted almost uncomfortably in his seat, then, his frigid body coming for a moment to life as he fought for the words,

"…Are you alright? Really? This week has been so much to handle, especially for you. And with the likelihood that you'll be the head D.A. now, having been second-best…"

Rachel cut off his words, then, feeling the vicious urge to bite back any attempted reference by Bruce to Harvey. She didn't want that ache in her heart right now; she didn't want that dormant pain to rattle her nerves. Not yet.

"Bruce, it's okay. I've got my sleep, my rest…and we all go on, as does Gotham. The funeral's this evening; after all of it, after everything's wrapped up and over with…I'll be okay, too. I have to be Gotham now, don't I, now that I'll probably be D.A.? I have to be in touch with it, I have to be…a little more like Batman. So I can't let these emotions get the best of me, right?"

As she spoke, her voice gave more guilelessness to her words than her actual thoughts. She doubted she could ever heal from the events that had scarred her beyond repair; disfigured her, just as the Joker's leering, hideously torn grin, looking back at her even now when she struggled to have a normal conversation with her not-so-normal friend. Forcefully, she gazed into Bruce's eyes as he contemplated her words, seeming to try and analyze her with his own iron stare as if to see the truth within her soul, as if convinced that she was more hurt than she let on…which he would be completely right in thinking, anyway.

"Batman's only human, Rachel. And so are you. So was…"

He tensed, correcting himself before he could emit the blow,

"…So were all the other D.A.s before you. We're all humans trying to fight the ideal of crime. But that doesn't mean that we can just let ourselves get hurt and not confide in anyone. That we can just…walk away, crippled, and let no one help us while we recover."

Rachel fought the urge to roll her eyes as her frustration grew. For a horrifying moment, the anger rose within her again; but not for the Joker himself, but towards Bruce, towards Batman—'why should he care when he wanted me dead in the first place? Why does he treat me like this, when he intended to leave me there to explode like—like…'

'Bait.'

The voice in her mind, the high-pitched squeal hissed as if haunting her, possessing her. She squeezed her lids shut and gave a deep, shuddering groan; one that she was sure would come off to Bruce as annoyance, exasperation.

"Listen, Bruce…"

Rachel gazed down at the glossy tabletop, watching her eyes in its pristine surface. They looked so heavy, so weighed down and worn…had she always looked this way, worn by work, weighed down by Gotham's troubles? When did it begin to take its toll on her? When would people notice her burden, want to label her as weak?

She shifted her fingers, watched them twitch against the tabletop unsteadily as they knitted together, broke apart, drummed across the table's surface,

"I know you think I'm weaker than the rest. Because…because we were friends for so long. You can see all my flaws; you can see all my setbacks. But from now on you have to see me as an associate, as someone like Harvey was, as Batman's friend as well as your own. We have to work together to ensure Gotham is safe, and no matter how much anything may hurt me, you have to let me stand on my own two feet for once."

She raised her head and met his gaze again, sucking in a deep breath to meet his unconvinced expression; his brows still knitted, his lips taut in a hard line against his stone-like face.

"Rachel, what did the Joker do to you last night?"

The unexpected question caught her off guard; she felt her eyes widen automatically, her hands dropping from the counter to fiddle distractedly across her lap, soothe her suddenly frayed nerves. Everything grew tense, then; her breath hitched, her body uncomfortably taut against her seat.

"He…he didn't do anything," She replied, keeping her voice as level and honest as it could possibly sound, because that part was true in a way, "We just…we just talked."

She knew as she spoke that he would be unconvinced. The vigilante didn't disappoint; he raised a brow, crossing his arms before his chest in what she knew to be his defensive posture,

"Talked? Rachel, when I saw you, you had fainted, and you were lying across the floor completely helpless while he was dragging you on the ground, laughing. He attacked you at least. And you had a gun in your hands and nearly shot me when you came to. You should have seen yourself, Rachel…you looked hysterical. You looked…"

'Like the day before, when he scooped me up into his arms instead of Harvey, and I begged him to let me go and burn and die instead.'

As she mentally finished his words, her stomach twisted at the memory. Rachel found herself staring at Bruce's form, lowered in a heavy tangle of thoughts, wondering what he could possibly be thinking at this point in their uncomfortable conversation. He was worried for her, of course, but at the same time she wondered if he still felt that gnawing, pervading guilt that nipped at her heels, threatened to devour her if she wanted for one moment to forget, to push it aside—the guilt that came with his failure to save Harvey, having brought her out of the building instead. And then he had nearly come too late again, when she had encountered the Joker…

'But would he care if the Joker had somehow ended up turning my gun on me last night, and taking my life? Would he relish the balance, knowing that I was gone as well as Harvey, and he failed to save both lives instead of sacrificing one for the other?'

Her mind rushed through the dark, pervading thoughts with reckless abandon, careless as to how it pierced and struck her heart, caused her chest to swell and ache. Bruce could be wishing she had died at that very moment, and she would never know—he could be wishing Gotham was still stronger with Harvey's survival, just as the Joker had told her, just as he had reasoned with her the night before—

'No. Shut up! The man's crazy, he was trying to manipulate you into thinking this way. And here you are, letting him win. Don't let him win!'

She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood as she pushed her thoughts away for her friend's sake. Rachel brought her hand against Bruce's again—still cold, yet heated by the warmth of his strong, firm skin. The heavy eyes looked up at hers, and she could see the weariness in them, the fatigue beyond sleeplessness that only the Batman himself could suffer.

"Bruce. We got through it, okay? We made it through the night, and it's another day. I…I don't remember what happened after I pointed the gun at him, and I don't want to. I want to move on. I want…"

She turned her head away, keeping the thought only in her head rather than foolishly spilling from her lips.

Vengeance. Justice. Retribution.

"…a new beginning. I was hysterical last night, yes, and I wasn't thinking when I barged in and saw him, I was just…angry. But it's gone now, it's okay. We made it out fine, and now we can fix everything."

Bruce watched her with a strange new emotion behind his black irises; Rachel couldn't quite read it, yet as he nodded slightly, she saw the gleam and realized it was the strangeness of recognition, as if he had truly seen her for the first time after years upon years of friendship.

"Do you remember…when we were younger, and Chill was shot?"

His gaze was unfaltering, adamant. She swallowed the lump in her throat as she felt him stare with such solid desperation it was as if they were in the interrogation room; her, the criminal, him the relentless questioner. Without another moment's hesitation, she nodded in response, wanting him to stop, to stop making such stupid, foolish comparisons to his own life, to his own past.

"Do you remember what you told me, when we were in the car together, and you…you slapped me when I showed you my own pistol, after wanting to have shot him out of vengeance?"

She nodded again, sudden anger blooming in her veins at his continued comparison of the two of them. Rachel had been younger, hadn't lived through the death of the man she had no doubt in her mind she had truly loved—what had she known about vengeance, then; let alone loss, grief, anger? She was a young D.A. all those years ago, naïve and stupid, driven by ideals that had burned days ago and collapsed in on themselves in the aftermath of devastation. Her throat burned as she swallowed, pushing back the outrage that balled like a solid mass within her.

"What did you say then?"

Bruce asked her after what seemed to be a long pause, having been made short by her own turbulent thoughts. Her eyes met his and she prayed he was shielded from the searing, terrifying rage within her. She licked her suddenly dry lips quickly, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear,

"I…I said that justice was about harmony. I said revenge was selfish, only about making yourself feel better. That our system was…impartial."

The words burned as they slid from her tongue; for every syllable, for every slur of her lips, she knew them now to be a lie. The system could be corrupt, she had been taught that through years of fighting the mob in desperate court battles, suffering the mob's corruption of the police force, and justice was a twisted notion. Why else would they have to rely on a masked vigilante for the city's welfare? Why else would Harvey have died and left this place defenseless?

Bruce seemed satisfied by her words, a small grin playing on his lips,

"I took what you said to heart. I realized that vengeance was no way to ensure the safety of Gotham and of its people—we needed impartial justice. That's why the Joker's death last night wouldn't have solved anything, Rachel. We need him alive to put on trial and lock away in Arkham, not dead so we would end up on his level. "

Her lip was quivering. She felt it so strongly she knew it was impossible to stop now that Bruce had undoubtedly seen it; squeezing her eyes shut so tightly that multicolored lights danced before her eyes, Rachel buried her face in her hands and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

"Rachel?" Bruce murmured quietly, his voice almost pleading with her like a silent prayer, "Rachel, what's…"

"So what's going to happen if we don't kill him, hmm?"

Her voice was surprisingly strong, the strongest it had been in a very long time, almost a shout when it came from her previously pursed lips, the black anger kindling within her and ready to burst,

"The Joker escaped before, and with it he left countless bodies in his wake. Are we just going to keep locking him up again and again with him coming back stronger every time? Is the body count going to skyrocket even more? Don't treat me like an idiot, Bruce. You wouldn't be lecturing Harvey on the principles of morality if he was still alive, and I'm not a child to be lectured to. I know what it's like to lose someone close to me—to talk to him before he died. And you want us to just sit back and lose more and more people we care about? Is that what you want, Bruce?! Because I'm not letting it happen any more!"

She was shouting, then, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, her brain pounding against her skull with the exertion of every word that poured through her lips like fluid acid to sting and burn and damage the man before her. Bruce stared at her with a look that was indescribable; he pulled himself to his feet, straightening his crisp jacket and tie, and after a short, tense silence, began to walk towards the door,

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Rachel. I'm sorry that Batman failed you."

Rachel sat there, inert and still, her lips pursed, immense guilt weighing heavily on her shoulders like lead despite the sickening satisfaction that pulsed inside of her like a living, purring animal. Both fought for control, the living, thriving smugness and heavy, suffocating guilt, so overwhelming at that moment she felt as if she were being torn apart with every passing second. As Bruce pulled the door opened, and began to walk across the threshold from her apartment to the outside world, Rachel felt as if he were tearing himself away from her forever.

"Bruce…" She whispered dryly to the air, yet he slammed the door behind her with such force she doubted he had even heard the silent plea from within her.

***

The phone was ringing.

Rachel had drifted at some point in time, had succumbed to a mid-morning nap; she knew this when she pulled herself heavily from the darkness of her couch and felt across the wooden desk nearby for the shrill, leaping cell phone at her side. Judging by the light that still drenched the floor gratuitously through the blinded windows, it was mid-afternoon, still a good hour before Harvey's funeral. Her head pounded as if she had knocked out with illegal drugs to her system, her mind still groggy as she picked up the persistent phone and pulled it to her face, fighting back a yawn. She didn't even care if it was Bruce on the other line; she just wanted the damn phone to shut up and let her sleep a little longer.

The name that flashed at her across the screen made her heart drop and her fatigue die away.

Harvey Dent.

Her breath caught in her throat as the phone continued to ring, persistently, adamantly, its screaming voice jarring her aching brain, winding chills through her twisting spine, reducing her stomach to liquid in all her horrified panic. Was she dreaming? Was this a sick joke?

The dread settled in a knot along the pit of her stomach as she pushed any tempting thoughts away—that it really was the man whose funeral was in mere hours, whose name blinked rapidly across the screen, causing her cell to vibrate and scream and shudder as if possessed. It seemed as if it would never stop unless she answered. She had frozen still for at least a solid minute, the name boring into her sight and dizzying her with all its implications.

It was only when Rachel pulled the phone to her ear that she realized she had been violently shaking.

"Hello?"

Her voice was scratchy, quivering.

She didn't expect the shrill, piercing laughter on the other end.

"Good morning, sleeee-ping beyooo-ty! I thought you'd never answer your phone—I would have had to pay you a visit myself!"

Her heart sank; she felt her knees turn to liquid, dragging her body down into the couch. For a moment Rachel's eyes flicked from the wall before her towards the door of her apartment, as if the voice on the other end would barge through at any moment, as if he were watching her through the peephole, waiting for his chance to invade and attack. The thought caused her to shudder, though the dormant hatred pricked at the edges of her flesh in needles as the Joker taunted her.

Bracing herself, she dug her free fingers into her palm, the force biting through skin and leaving crescent-shaped marks red with blood that sent adrenaline through her system,

"I see you're not only a murderer, but a thief too."

An amused chuckle on the other line, followed rapidly by a high-pitched response,

"Well then, a murderer? I guess that makes the two of us."

The anger that bubbled against her spine and ran along the back of her neck felt as if it would tear her apart as she pressed the phone hard against her ear,

"I don't understand what the fuck you're talking about. I told you, your mind-games don't work with me."

An exaggerated pause, only to be followed by a whistle of mock awe,

"Ooh, and you're just as feisty and violent as you are in person! But I guess you'd have to be, seeing as how vicious you really are underneath that pretty exterior. Why, you almost blew me apart the other night—and you would have succeeded, too, if it wasn't for the Bat having rudely interrupted us! Well, and your teeny little fainting spell as well…"

Rachel could hear the sarcasm dripping with each word he spoke through his cracked, scarred lips; she could imagine him now, his reptilian tongue snaking through his red maw in animal hunger for her retort, his eyes burning with savage amusement at her expense. She could tear the phone apart with the strength in which she gripped it, could even hang up and fling it into the wall—yet a part of her didn't want to budge, not in the slightest. A part of her wanted to talk to the sick bastard.

"To think," He continued mercilessly, his voice lower in an almost conspiratorial whisper, "If Batman knew how you never seem to keep yourself composed around me! Tied up, fainting…I must really know how to please a woman, don't I? Maybe even better than your precious little Harvey, I'm sure he was too self-absorbed to give you any fun in the first place…"

"Shut up and tell me what you want!" She hissed, her voice so loud she was sure those on the street through her window could hear her.

A loud, satisfied cackle and whooping burst from the other end of the phone, so intense she could hear crackling on the other end,

"I just wanted to continue our enchanting little conversation the night before. You know, our little bond session, our heart-to-heart. To think we were making some progress in being good friends before the Batman showed up and wanted you all to himself! Now that's just rude, and I feel cheated. I want us to… talk some more, one-on-one, somewhere where we can't be disturbed."

Rachel wanted to scream. She wanted to pull the bastard through the phone itself (if it were at all possible) and kill him right there. Did he think her that stupid? His mockery made her seethe as she retorted sharply,

"And what if I don't want to?"

A quick pause, then, as if she had managed to unnerve him; he spoke casually, confidently, completely unfazed by her words of defiance,

"Well then, I'll just have to drop by a certain dearly beloved's sending off and look for you myself. And to think you were over him so fast, with that man in your apartment earlier today…"

She actually gasped; a chill ran down her spine as she pulled herself to her feet, at a loss for words. He knew where she lived. He had been watching her! A hideously excited cackle burst from the other end of the line, strong and forceful in all its vicious mirth,

"Don't worry, there's no fun in ending our little friendship too soon! I won't violate you…well, at least your home."

Rachel could feel him smiling, the slippery red grin oozing into her body as if penetrating her,

"You're a sick bastard. Leave Bruce out of this."

The clicking of a tongue in a "tsk-tsk" noise, as if he were scolding her,

"Ah-ah-ah, you are a naughty girl, aren't you? Entertaining a guest in the middle of the morning and then telling me who not to play with?! Why I think I have to play with him now, just because you don't want me to…and I can think of some very fun games to play."

She couldn't take this anymore. Rachel leapt to her feet, staring wildly about her once-peaceful living room, her body tense as she ran to the door and checked the locks again and again,

"Damn it, if you want to talk to me, then talk to me, just don't hurt Bruce! Do whatever you want to me, not him!"

A low chuckle; suggestive, now, dripping with perversion. The high-pitched voice was overly husky, almost rasping,

"Whatever I want? I like the sound of that, I like it…alot. Oh, but don't worry! I'll be seeing you very soon, in less than…oh, an hour now—and then we can all play! Until then, beautiful!"

Sadistic laughter tore at her eardrums, caused her to wince as the line suddenly shut, the hollow noise ringing through her head as she pressed her cellular snug against her hip, allowing it to dig into her flesh. For a moment the dread took hold of her, and she panicked; her fingers swiftly dialed Bruce's number, tongue held between teeth, fists clutched.

One ring, two…

No one answered.

Rachel swore and shut it quickly, struggling to regain her composure and think.

After a moment, she knew what she had to do. She couldn't tell Bruce—she wouldn't let his absence from the funeral and Batman's sudden appearance cause the Joker to deduce his identity, but what if the Joker did try to hurt him, or had gotten to him already—? Swearing frantically, Rachel ran to retrieve her keys, stowing them away in the pocket of an overcoat she swung rapidly about her shoulders. She couldn't just sit here, not when the funeral was suddenly so close, not when she knew it would be ravaged by the loss of lives again…because of her own stupidity.

Without another thought, she forced her door open and shut it quickly, knowing she would be at least an hour early for her late fiancée's funeral—but in her mind, it could already be an hour too late.


	4. Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'I win,' his painted smile seemed to leer, 'I win and you're going to play my little game the way I want.'

Only five minutes ago, Rachel had begun to race.

What was she racing? The clock that ticked away with vicious rapidity every millisecond, stealing her breath each time she dared to glance at the electric digits in her car? Or maybe she was hoping she would intercept Bruce on his way to Harvey's funeral—if he wasn't already gone, dragged off somewhere, hurt. If anything, she wasn't racing against him, the madman who had initiated the latest batch of chaos in the first place. He was waiting for her, and the thought that he always knew where she was, had been watching her as she lived day-to-day chilled her to the bones.

Ten, fifteen minutes in traffic. Cars zoomed past in blurs of color as she cursed wildly, slammed a heel against the gas, and floored it. There were no policemen around; they were all stationed outside the funeral home, doing their customary mournful walk before the actual ceremony. Typical of Gotham, the most corrupted place on Earth, to take its crime fighters on another day off as if it was a welcome privilege. But then again, it was also an acknowledgement of failure; a celebration for their enemies.

She passed glaring red lights without stopping, fucking annoying pedestrians that screamed even when she frantically beeped them out of the way, stop signs that she would have rather plowed through in all her hurry than abide by. The funeral home zoomed into sight like a rapidly budding pinprick of black against the horizon, magnified twice its size every second with her relentless speed. As her car skidded to a halt outside the already crowded area, Rachel pulled herself from the halted vehicle and stared across the asphalt to the nearly-finished parade.

There were countless people there; standing outside of their homes or gazing out of windows at the procession, clustered across the sidewalks in rows upon rows of heads, as all Gotham's sizable police force lined in rows of navy blue, badges glinting in the evening sunlight, weapons in hand with the rigid formality of soldiers. Within the group was the remarkably long-living Mayor Garcia, his lifespan a phenomenon throughout such chaotic times; Commissioner Gordon at his side, his eyes darting pensively across the crowds as if sweeping for potential threat. Rachel should have been in the procession herself, she knew, but she hadn't formally been named head D.A.; it was just an informal fact that she was now in such a high position. For now, she was better off watching from the sidelines, better from keeping her panic isolated from formality and tradition.

'He wouldn't attack them all outside. He'll wait until we're all closed together; suffocated, cramped. Until we can't all get out at once. We could run out in the open, escape.'

She was thinking as predator, as an animal—it was the only way she could possibly predict what they would very soon inevitably face.

'Dehumanize yourself, and you can almost understand him. It's all just power play. It's all just chaos and anarchy. Marking your territory with blood instead of other fluids…'

As she thought, the heavy black coffin came into view, flanked by police officers. Rachel turned her head aside amidst the crowd and shut her eyes, her breath shaking. She struggled with all her might not to see the coffin's inhabitant, what lay within, even if it was the man she had loved. It was an object, now; a solid block of black, a slab of stone. There was no Harvey there. He was outside of it; he was in her memories and with her, nothing more, nothing less.

Comforted by the thought, Rachel stared at the passing coffin's back, at the miniature flood of more navy-blue outfitted officers that followed. She broke into a quick run at the side of the road, where the grim funeral building lay before.

She still hadn't seen Bruce.

***

She was searching. Close friends and officials clustered throughout the massive funeral home as if it were a miniature city, united in its black mourning. The men were dressed identically in their crisp suits, making it almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. Ten, fifteen minutes ticked voraciously by in which she forced herself through close-knit crowds with elbows and frantic shoves, receiving grunts and rude retorts but never truly hearing through the pounding in her ears, never seeing the faces that turned to stare. Rachel knew somehow that she would recognize Bruce if she ran into him, despite being tangled in the ocean of black-clad people that, in her panic, seemed to inhabit every corner of the funeral home's cramped entrance hall. She was glad she wasn't claustrophobic; even then, everything seemed to be pressing down on her as she walked quickly forward, pushing into her from left and right and behind as if the people would extend their arms and grab her, hinder her from finding Bruce, drag her back and away into nothingness.

Forcefully she pushed through the remainder of inhabitants, who gaped and glared at her as she passed, reaching blessedly empty air near the main room in which they would all be sitting soon to suffocate each other yet again. There were too many people here, their bodies seeming countless like swarms of black ants, all of them coming to pay tribute to the late D.A. and undoubtedly even now gazing with curiosity upon his former fiancée. But of course he would choose the most populated place to play his little games—where did she expect him to go and blow things up, an empty field?

A few more people stood before her as she advanced; men with their backs turned, adamantly blocking her way in their stiffness. She didn't have time to waste; she pushed between them, causing them to turn and stare. It was only until a hand grabbed her by her wrist that she turned and stared straight into the face of Gordon, watching her with an almost equally panicked look she knew was obvious upon her features at that very moment.

"Gordon," Rachel gasped, her voice almost cracking, while the two other policemen that had been at his side watched her curiously.

Gordon's face seemed just as weary as she felt; he held the tops of her arms and watched her intently, studying her telltale expression,

"Rachel. What's wrong? What did you hear?"

"He—he called me," She replied quietly, and he pulled her towards a corner as she spoke, fighting back the urge to raise her voice in her panicked ire, "He told me he'd be here…but I haven't seen him, I don't know where he'd be, he's inside though, Gordon, he has to be…"

Gordon nodded, his eyes wide behind his glasses yet glazed over with sharp determination,

"Of course, you're right…he's here somewhere. I'll stand guard with the others in outside while it's happening, there are already a few in the room—everything will be okay, we'll get the bastard." He paused as he motioned the officers he had been standing with to come forward, just as the dozens of guests began to file through the opened doors,

"Did…he say what he was after?"

She said nothing; her throat caught, her eyes conveying the answer before her lips could. He stared at her for a solid minute before understanding filled his face, which then twisted in almost violent ambition,

"We're not letting him get to you, Rachel. Go with the guards. We'll seal the door and watch everyone who files in."

Hesitantly, she nodded, wanting to protest; wanting her own gun, at least. Something akin to skepticism filled her gut; perhaps it was instinct, knowing that somehow the plan that Gordon lay would turn on itself, or perhaps never even work in the first place. They'd been through too much to be overly optimistic—

Rachel had learned a long time ago it was no use to believe in miracles when there was no God in Gotham to grant them.

***

Surveying the people that filled the long aisles with a sweeping gaze, she wondered just how many of them could escape in time. Policemen filled the aisles intermittently between Harvey's relatives and close friends, city officials in such variety as judges, politicians and high-ranking lawyers, the Mayor himself sitting flanked with two officers on each side. The aisles were filling up fast, so fast that she had barely caught the familiar sight of Bruce, relief flooding her in wild currents at his strongly comforting frame.

For a moment she tried to reach him—she didn't know if he would talk to her, even, or if it was worth telling him of the potential threat. The Joker may not even be able to get through the door; his scars would mark him apart from the others, make up or not, all the mobsters able to be identified by plain sight. Besides, if anything were to happen…well, Batman would find a way to leave, to come back and aid them all. Comforted by this logic, she crossed her legs and took in a deep breath as she sat at the foremost aisle, the only one that had not been completely inhabited, her eyes still catching on Bruce's side, as if internally begging him to look in her direction, if only to really be sure he had been untouched.

Crossing her arms against her overcoat, she bit her lip and anxiously watched the first few people speak, repeating words they had spoken while at the parade; Mayor Garcia, the police alert to attention at the sides of the rooms, pacing slowly and deliberately; prominent district judges; city officials who she failed to notice and recognize in her mental preoccupation. Where could he possibly be, where could he possibly make an entrance? Her mind strained to think along the edges of his own; the best trick, the most malicious arrival possible…

"Rachel," A voice whispered in her ear, breaking the tense silence for a moment.

One of the officers who had been sitting next to her was staring at her, his kind gaze watching her intently as she focused on reality; she took in the hushed crowd of people around her, the cold wooden surface of the aisle against her hands…everything seemed to be tense, taut, waiting. It was then she realized half of the reason was because they were waiting on her, because sometime or other they had called her for the closing eulogy, and she was expected to stand and speak. Coughing slightly, the District Attorney straightened her dress and pulled herself to her feet, making her way towards the foremost section of the suddenly very cramped hall.

She was standing at the podium, her heart racing frantically in her ribs, pounding so hard it felt hot and raw. Her eyes swept the endless rows of people once, twice, spotting Bruce again, who was sitting with a mixed look of rapt attention and saddened resignation on his unknowing face, a flash of Mayor Garcia with his eyes savage and stricken with a hint of a paranoia as his black-clad men took their posted seats at the end of each aisle, a few of Harvey's close and distant relatives, sobbing into handkerchiefs or looking off into the distance...

Every other face seemed to shift into an endless conglomeration of skin against black fabric; she couldn't make any sense of which one was stark white with those ghastly eyes and reddened lips--or, if he wasn't wearing his war paint, she couldn't even see his scars. The doors had been tightly sealed shut, flanked on the outside by officers, by Gordon, whom she vehemently prayed was still alright. Behind her, Harvey's coffin lay against a flat wall, sealed shut. There was no way the bastard could escape. There was no way all of them could escape at once.

And Batman himself was trapped in the room with them all, just as much as victim as the rest of them were.

She squeezed a fist against the podium, smiling tightly with a feigned mournfulness to hide her panic. He was here, somewhere, smiling that permanently carved Glasgow grin, out of sight yet never entirely far from her, his knife glinting and ready in whatever darkness he crept. For a fleeting moment, Rachel met Gordon's gaze through a slight crack in the heavy doors and saw the constant tenseness that was oblivious to all others flooding the room; they were mourning, yet they would never fully understand its true nature until the day died.

"Harvey Dent. What can we say about him that hasn't already been said?"

She began from pure unplanned speech; something ached in her chest as she said the name she hadn't fully wanted to acknowledge from anyone else's lips, but as it flew from her own it was like a betrayal. They could have been saying Rachel instead; there would be nothing to accompany her own funeral to match the degree of stringent trepidation in this room that made the air noxious and thick. Her eyes swept across the room again, again; all with that tight smile, each time going through every face before her and wondering what lay beneath the collared shirts, the lowered heads.

"As his former fiancée, I knew him much more personally than most would have the privilege to say. And I can tell you he was truly a great man, through and through, dedicated to protecting Gotham and its people. Harvey wanted not to be its sole protector, however; he wanted to be a symbol. He wanted to encourage everyone to stand up against the crime that ravaged our beautiful city, he wanted us to remember his examples and live by them. And we need to do that...starting today."

With every word, her apprehension grew; her voice shook at the end of the last sentence, one that could be easily masked by sympathetic funeral-goers as genuine sadness for Harvey's passing. Of course, part of that was true, yet at the moment she couldn't even think of the man behind her when a much more menacing one lay somewhere, mere feet before. Taking a very deep breath, she watched the unmoving crowd and gripped the podium's surface, digging nails into wood, the half-moon crests decorating the wooden angle. She could feel Bruce's eyes upon her as he read her open gaze, sensed her panic as only their intuition would allow; and before he could catch her own with a questioning look, she turned her head and continued, shutting her eyes,

"Harvey wanted us, and still wants us, to fight back. Although I am now a more prominent District Attorney, we can all be—we have to stop standing back and take action in any way we possibly can. We have to be justice for our Gotham, for Harvey's memory. We need to stand strong in spirit, to stand united together and face the criminals as we would have had Harvey still been with us and Batman—"

As she constantly looked around, at the rows upon rows of nods and approving murmurs, a flash of black stopped her dead in her speech. Out of the corner of her eye, Bruce gazed frantically his seat, and he, too, noticed what more and more people were beginning to respond to with bursts of outrage and annoyance. A man was out of his seat; an average-looking man, harmless had he not been running across the aisles at breakneck speed towards the cluster of policemen that had gathered before the podium.

"Batman is a murderer!" He screamed so loud his voice was raw and hoarse, his mouth foaming, his face a bulging red and eyes wide with nothing but chaos, "Batman murdered Harvey Dent!"

He was coming closer to the officers; their fists clenched around their shotguns as they held them steady, the three of them just as stunned and taken aback at the remainder of the crowd that still clustered the aisles, standing still like a black sheet.

"Stop where you are! Freeze!" They screamed in unison, their shotguns cocked, yet the man continued to run blindly up the long path, his hands waving, body shaking as if in convulsions—

Another man was running horizontally across the end of the room; another crept from a corner aisle, silent and still. Her body froze; she eyed every one of them, unmasked, average. Her gasp was echoed across the silent room, and she could see Gordon through the doorway, debating on whether to run through the door or stay still, Bruce at the desperate edge of action with his palms flexed against the seat's surface, his knees bent—

And then all hell broke loose.

The screaming man lunged at the nearest of the three officers; the hail of bullets penetrated the silent air like miniature bombs, and Rachel found herself watching with transfixed horror as his body shook and convulsed full of the artillery, holes bursting across flesh and blood dribbling like a fountain.

"Stop that! Stop at once—ENOUGH!"

Gordon screamed from his position, his face pink with a mixture of rage and horror as the wide-eyed frightened policemen continued to shoot in their panic. Screams echoed across the aisle ways as people rustled and jostled one another, ducking their heads in their seats, each contemplating leaving the funeral yet none daring to run amidst the gunfire. Bruce was watching the other two men who were prowling, seemingly unnoticed, amidst the panic; as did Rachel, her breath hitched and shuddering against the microphone, her voice as steady as she could keep it amidst the constant quivering,

"Everyone...stay calm. Stay in your seats, please. There are people armed in the back of the room—"

Her reflexes acted before she could. As the hail of bullets from the two men's guns, pulled from their suit coats, pored across the podium, she jerked herself beneath it, her head ducking under her forearms. She found herself crawling rapidly across the small expanse of ground to reach the back of Harvey's coffin. They wouldn't have been able to see her; she pulled herself behind the wood, gazing out with widened eyes and frantic resolve across the now wild, panic-stricken crowd. The men stopped firing yet all eyes were transfixed upon them; at their leering, seemingly emotionless faces, devoid of anything but apathy.

In an instant, the rows of once indiscernible, still headed people were reduced to wide-eyed, screaming masses. They couldn't stay in their seats for long, despite the men who threatened them with guns, the strangely unresponsive officers, every scream from every person heightened, magnified, until it formed unanimous, hysterical cries of pure fear. A wide-eyed man, shuddering wildly, suddenly caught her gaze as she found him creeping across the aisle way, the policemen still sitting with straight faces, the two prowling figures oddly silent and inert.

It didn't take long to realize why they didn't keep him from escaping through the aisle. As he jumped across its wooden edge with the intent of running as rapidly towards the door as he could, his mouth uttered a strange, gnarled cry. The sound of something beeping filled the room, overtook the screams as all eyes were upon him, as she made out the thick, almost wiry line that extended across either end of each aisle way, something he had tripped—

His body burst into flames as he hit the wall nearby, having flung himself into its hard surface in panic as the aisle bomb ignited. Instantly, the other hysterical, screaming people lining the same aisle grew more and more frantic as their own bodies burst with the hungry fire, and she realized it had been a bomb that man had tripped, as the wooden seat ignited in a miniature wildfire, the civilians scorched before countless panicked eyes.

Rachel bit back her own terrified cry at the sight, covering her mouth with her hands, watching Bruce's equally horrified stare.

They were trapped.

They were being held and confined in their seats, the unwilling audience to a show of horrors.

She eyed the two men at the end of the room again, the men whose guns had not faltered in their aim or their bodies in all its quiet stillness.

They were staring ahead at something.

At first she thought it was herself, and she hoisted her body behind the coffin again; then she was aware that it was moving slightly, the edge quivering as if vibrating from within.

Vibrating with high-pitched laughter.

She couldn't move; she was paralyzed with outrage, fear, terror. All at once these emotions that had not at all been present before built up to a horrific clenching in her stomach; she pushed her hands hard against the wooden floor, used it to spring up slightly on her knees, scrabbled against the wall as the coffin suddenly jerked violently upwards and began to swing slowly, steadily opened. The laughing continued, reduced to a low, yet even more violently shuddering cackle. The men at the end of the room began to rustle and shuffle their feet almost unconsciously as the coffin's top hit its creaking, whining edge to fully reveal the body within it. By the time Rachel could twist her head properly and watch them, their guns still pointed towards her hunched body, they were wearing clown masks, as well as the policemen who had been shooting them minutes before.

Her eyes met Bruce's, held his gaze steady. He was staring back at her with unabashed terror.

She could see the side of the inhabitant figure clearly; her hands shook and ached to lunge and attack it as she took in the full view of what the rest of the crowd perceived at the very same moment. The purple-suited thing seemed sleeping peacefully, his eyes clenched shut, the lacerations of that never-ending grin standing up red and puffed and almost bloody in the fluorescent bulbs of the funeral home. His arms were crossed upon his torso as he lay there, mockingly inanimate; and then Rachel saw what he was lying on top of, and an angry, almost inhuman snarl wrenched its way from her throat.

Around him lay multicolored boxes, strung with green ribbon in all their various jeweled shades.

Explosives.

Her stomach flipped. Bruce's eyes hardened from the corner of her gaze, his face dripping with acid hatred and extreme frustration. The familiar frustration of powerlessness; Rachel had known it all too well throughout her lifetime, and now she felt it quite achingly, with the clown bastards' guns pointed straight at her and every single individual, including Batman, potentially wired to an explosive in his seat. Not to mention the bushel that lay beneath the clown prick's still form.

'Everyone is wired but me,' she suddenly realized. 

Desperately, her breath taut in her throat, she pulled herself to her feet.

The clowns lowered their guns that had been cocked and ready for her head. She gazed at them in both confusion and suspicion as she stood straight behind the coffin, her feet aching to walk away, shuffle across the gaze of hundreds of terrified eyes and sadistic accomplices and dread-filled loved ones to safety. To Batman.

'But even Batman comes with a little death this time, doesn't he?'

As she took a careful step to the side, a loud, fervent clapping rang from the opened coffin. The Joker snapped his eyes wide and grinned beneath his hideously deformed scars; he jumped lithely from his laying position to sit roughly upon the edge of Harvey's coffin, chuckling lightly as he continued to clap with growing fervor.

"Brava, brava, brava!" He shouted enthusiastically, his tone as always glazed over with genuine amusement and feigned praise, "A wonderful, thrilling show you've put on for us my darling little D.A.! Poor wittle fallen Harvey's wishes echoed in the words of his broken-hearted mistress, the talk of defending Gotham and taking up the mantle for dramatic effect, and..."

He gestured towards the frozen crowd, the two of his own men, the sealed doors; then, his grin widening until his scars appeared about to rip, he turned his head with the slow, deliberateness of a snake lewdly closing in on prey, his painted eyes meeting her own,

"The horrible irony of it all. Hilarious!"

With a ringing peal of laughter that echoed across the never ending aisles, the Joker slapped his thigh and resettled himself in his seemingly comfortable position upon the cushion that was the late Harvey Dent's coffin. Rachel's form quivered violently beneath her dress; she held her tongue between her teeth to keep from lashing out at the madman with her fists and enduring the unpleasant barrage of his accomplices' bullets within her body at her outburst.

Bruce Wayne was fuming. Gordon even more so, as she saw him standing at the very front of the sealed door, his men pounding frantically at the other end. His face turned purple, glasses nearly going askew with the strength of his scream,

"You cowardly son of a bitch! Holding us all prisoners with your antics at a funeral home?! My men are going to rip your hide in half when they manage to get to you, you motherfucking sadistic clown!"

The Joker's eyes, boring and icy as always, flicked from Rachel's at that moment to Gordon's hysterical expression, an expression of twisted darkness looming over his chalk-white face for one unsettling moment. Then his fleeting frown twisted wildly against his face and he was shaking with giggles, giggles which echoed across the tense air and made it slick and hot with her own burning hatred.

"You know...that's the most colorful I've heard your vocabulary, commissioner! Perhaps it's because you are so, ah... pathetically weak right now? Being held captive by a scarred up circus-clown must really be damaging for that inflated, pompous ego—"

Gordon pulled out a pistol from his jacket, aiming with a shaking hand,

"I'll show you damaging, you--"

"Ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh!" He sang in a crooning voice; in an instant he made a sweeping gesture and pulled a crudely made detonator from his pocket, throwing it up and down with careless abandon against his palm.

A gasp swept across the room by the horrified civilians caught within the cross-fire; at their unanimous fear, he cackled again, his serpentine tongue running over the red slit of his scarred mouth,

"You might want to be careful with how sweetly you want to persuade me, commissioner. Your words might have...a lasting effect."

With a smirk, he pulled himself from his makeshift throne upon his explosives and stood upon his feet, stretching exaggeratedly like a cat. Rachel watched his casualty with growing frustration; she stared for a moment at Harvey's coffin, the body undeniably lost, her heart quivering dangerously with the threat to explode in on itself at her realization her lover had been crudely violated.

"What do you want, Joker?" Gordon inquired quietly, his eyes ablaze as they kept themselves fixed upon the figure which paced back and forth across the coffin's front, looking quite smug and pleased with himself.

A giggle in response; excited, as if it were a young child having been asked to display his perfect report card,

"What do I want? Why thank you for asking, but the answer is quite obvious even for nitwits—"

As he spoke he flicked his gaze towards Rachel, again, cocking his head as a smirk played through the war paint, a smirk that she returned with a violent glare she desperately hoped failed to showcase any flicker of fear.

"I want Gotham to burn, turn into pretty little ashes from the bottoms-up! This entire city is just a sick joke that's been allowed to run for too long!" He giggled after every exaggerated emphasis of a word, his tongue flicking across his mouth as his excitement bubbled and threatened to burst, "All these stupid officials thinking they can stop the corruption when every single person in this room..."

He paused for a moment, turning his body completely towards Rachel's inert frame. His eyes penetrated her own for the first time since the other day; brooding, violating, raping her frail, rage-shaken control. They held knowledge in them as he stared, some smug perception of her that couldn't possibly be true but made perfect sense in his twisted mind. With a flourish, the psychopath held a hand out towards her; she refused to take it, continuing to stay still, and he growled and grabbed so hard at her wrist his nails dug into her flesh. He twisted her forwards with violent force, too strong for her to do anything but follow, a shriek escaping her mouth as the pain set her nerves ablaze. A chuckle bubbled against her ear as she found herself pressed forcefully in front of his torso, his hot breath on her neck, tickling her skin that prickled as uncomfortably to the touch as if acid had been poured upon each and every pore. She felt the sharpness of his knife digging gently against her back, as he held both her arms backwards, twisted together uncomfortably in his surprisingly strong grip,

"Including, if not especially, our lovely D.A. here. She's corrupted beyond belief!"

Gordon's eyes were wide and murderous; he held his pistol at aim, still, yet had no chance of shooting at his distance and missing Rachel's body which was so tightly pressed against the Joker's. She willed him to just shoot, begged him in her mind, didn't care in the slightest if the bullets penetrated her own body and killed her outright but God, not all these people—

"Let her go."

A pause; a fleeting, deadly quiet of recognition that sent dread through Rachel's spine as soon as she sensed it. The hot breath that ran along her neck was replaced with the horrific feeling of the cold, uneven skin of a scar pressed up against the back of her throat; he was smiling against her, tauntingly, the other end of his Glasgow grin pointed in Bruce Wayne's direction as she felt the Joker gaze upon him for the first time.

His words haunted her again, came back as high-pitched and sadistically painful in its accuracy as it was now, as he held her so close that one flick of his knife in the right place could end her life in seconds:

'Bait.'

"Funny," The Joker replied smoothly, his voice suddenly devoid of a chuckle, down to a quiet hiss, "I thought my jokes were bad. You expect me to listen to you, when you're not locked up in your fancy little manor, delusional in your pitiful little thinking that you have any semblance of power when I could fucking blow you sky-high right now?"

Bruce's dark gaze mirrored the Joker's as he stared straight at him for a time that felt frozen in eternity. Her body was quivering against the knife upon the small of her back, and the Joker responded to her automatic quivering with another grin of spreading scars against her goose bumped flesh. Slowly, he raised his knife carefully enough from her back upwards so as to not tear clothing yet to send a revolted chill up her spine; she twitched in his grip in protest, but that only elicited a shudder from her mouth when the tip of his knife jabbed against the top of her back, just beneath her shoulder blades. Then, as if settling on a position in which to torment her best, he cradled her chin forcefully in a gloved hand while using the other to press the blade against her jugular vein, stroking lightly up and down across the wildly beating pulse point.

Rachel didn't want to look at anyone in the hushed crowd; her eyes burned with the shame of being shown on display by this madman, twisted into another object for his own sadistic ends.

'Does this mean I should fight back, and die now, or stay still and die later?'

Her mind played with the thought darkly, disgusted at the own helpless vulnerability it implied. Her breath grew heavier, hotter; her limbs tensed. Every part of her ached to reach backwards and kick him; yet he could thrust himself forward and stab the blade straight through, and she would collapse in a heap of her own blood against the ground, defeated. She couldn't let such a thing happen, especially when...

'What? Especially when Bruce is watching? Are you sure he would mind? Or do you just want to live through another day so you can bury that knife in the Joker's gut yourself?'

Instead of resisting, her eyes met Bruce's again; his hard, seething stare grew more and more enraged with every passing moment. His cheeks were flushed red, his brows pressed together; she realized what the bastard behind her was doing, and that was intentionally provoking Bruce into saying the wrong thing, into provoking him. She wasn't the target; *Bruce* was.

If she fought back and he attacked her, would Bruce lose his nerve and jump from the seat, only to be blown into nonexistence with the bloodied, charred aisle on the other end? Gordon was taking deep, shuddering breaths, the people surrounding them merely watching, transfixed with fear and grief amidst their own captivity.

'Please Bruce, don't lose your nerve. Just let him do what he wants...just for now. Batman can't help right now. Batman isn't *you* right now.'

Her eyes were silently pleading, his own stricken over with hardened pain. 

Bruce's fingers trembled against his seat at the very end of the aisle as he never looked away; with a low, bestial purr, she felt the ice cold blade's tip run up her throat and behind her ear, brushing at her hair, sweeping it away from the side of her face. Keeping his knife poised along the spot between the side of her chin and throbbing, pulsing heartbeat, the sadistic snake giggled and ran a cold, slippery tongue along the point his knife had marked. A jolt ran through Rachel and she whimpered in frustrated protest, her whimper becoming a gasp as the tip of the blade sank along the saliva-slicked line, cutting it through in a shallow, reddening wound. Blood slid from her white neck; slowly, dribbling down across her collarbone, searing hot and painful against her clammy flesh, and Bruce bit back a howl of rage at the sight of it. Her neck throbbed as the tiny trace of pain seared against her frantic pulse, yet she refused to give him the satisfaction of displaying any fear other than her wildly pumping heart.

"Tell me, does it...excite Gotham to know that its...thirst for violence has been slaked by the death of the almighty Dent?" He asked casually as he continued to trace her skin with his blade; not cutting now, but teasing, struggling to intimidate the quiet, still girl in his grasp,

"Does it please you all to see even your newest D.A., the next defenseless human from the pathetic hordes of Gotham city, being offered up here like a sacrifice? Well, as long as it isn't any of you, then it doesn't matter who dies! When everything goes according to plan, you're all happy with your bloodshed. And I'm about to prove that."

His voice was dangerously low, then; he leaned forward and twisted his knife in a spinning circle across her collarbone, as if it were some sort of drill that never truly penetrated its intended target. With another giggle, he twisted her hair roughly behind her head in a tangled knot in his fingers, pulling her backwards; she twitched slightly in his forceful grip yet refused to reply yet again, her gaze as he met her own unerringly defiant.

Those goddamned eyes were boring into her again; his prodding gaze stiffened, darkened before flickering into hollow amusement. It was a game. It was another one of his games, a game to crack her, to make her break, to make her scream. It was being played in front of Gotham itself, orchestrated perfectly in the way he flicked his knife against her skin like a conductor's stick. It was being played in how many people she loved he could bring down before she would give in.

She wasn't willing to see Bruce's dead body added to that pile.

"You see," The Joker continued, eyeing Gordon and Bruce's trembling faces with a twisted leer of triumph, "I have certain ways to make all you people reveal your true little twisted selves. You're all out for yourselves, but you don't really know it yet, not until you're put in a situation. When little Smarvey Harvey was wired to his fireworks, ready to go BOOM!—you think he honestly cared about his little squeeze on the other end, or about surviving for the well-being of anyone here?"

"Enough with the lecture, Joker," Gordon hissed from his seat, even while the two of the Joker's drones raised their guns and cocked them in warning, "Tell us what you want."

A satisfied grin broke across the painted face, wide black eyes suddenly fiery with hunger,

"I want Gotham to burn, didn't I say that already, you damned idiot?!" A giggle broke across his lips; he eyed Bruce again, and Rachel could see he was fighting his every nerve not to lunge for the two of them and explode into pieces in the process, "But why speak in generalities? I want the new District Attorney, of course! I want to teach her a lesson! What a better way of, ah...initiation than to carve up that pretty little face--"

"And what if we don't let her?!"

The Joker watched as Bruce's eyes narrowed while Gordon asked the obvious question, beginning to reach a semblance of a breaking point. Rachel's body burned in aching suspense as she realized he was actually giving in to the clown's provocations; she bit her lip and shook her head against the knife that suddenly inched its way up to her lips, tracing their outline as it ran along to her jaw, the hollow of her cheek. His giggle became a hysterical cackle.

"Let her?! Let her?! I could carve her up right now if I wanted to!" His knife pierced the surface of her cheek, another dribble of blood running along her skin, as thin and delicate as a tear. Her cheek ached against the consistent pressure of his knife, yet she refused to flinch, to show him the least bit of fear or pain to satisfy him. Hostility flashed in her eyes, however; she couldn't help the pervading rage and desire to strike him that constantly filled her, growing until erupting; a potential, deadly mistake. His eyes flickered towards her, feeding on that rage, appearing almost thrilled by it.

'I win,' his painted smile seemed to leer, 'I win and you're going to play my little game the way I want.'

"You see," He continued, his voice low and rattling with perverse excitement, "There's no choice in this matter. Because the other choice...is every life in this room!"

A strangled gasp again; the entire silent crowd appeared to moan unanimously. A terrified child burst into tears against the silence, yet the Joker made no move to silence it. It seemed to excite him, this visible display of fear that emanated across the prominent populace crammed into the tiny room,

"Either Rachel Dawes, the pretty little D.A. of Goth-ham, comes along so we can, ah...have a little chat, or everyone else is blown into little itty bits and pieces from Smarvey Harvey's fireworks! Now does that sound like a fair deal?"

Even Gordon seemed to grow quiet, his discolored features sinking into a disheveled slump as the aisles shifted in their silent assent. Rachel's heart went cold, her veins freezing as the absolution dissolved over her. She would have to go with him. There was no choice; there had never been, ever since she had brought her gun to the bastard's head the other day. She would put up a fight, of course, when they were alone...but not while everyone in this room was strapped to a bomb, not while they all stared at her with their terrified, pleading eyes, and Bruce himself was on the verge of doing something extremely unwise and most likely enough to get him killed.

After dead stillness, Rachel opened her mouth to speak, feeling the Joker's already rumbling, triumphant laughter deep within his chest as he shoved her as forcefully against his body as he could manage. But as the words of surrender shaped along her trembling lips, a quiet voice interrupted them.

"You don't have to go anywhere, Rachel."

She wanted to scream in frustration. Instead she turned her head in unison with the suddenly unnerved madman that held her, feeling his body grow tense, her eyes prickling with unshed tears.

"Bruce," She pleaded, her voice a long, disparate sigh. She shook her head, tendrils of hair flying about her frantic face, her skin shuddering against the Joker's still-firm knife scratching deeper across her flesh, "Bruce, please don't do this. You don't want to do this. Just let me go. Please."

"No," Bruce barked back, his eyes bold and angry as they met her own, almost overwhelming, "You can't just give into this bastard! You can't let him win, Rachel!"

"Bruce, please," She said as the tears threatened to break, the Joker's snarl ripping from behind her like a bloodthirsty beast, "Please listen to me and let me go. Gotham can't go like this. You know there's no other choice."

Bruce was still shaking his head, his gaze as adamant and unyielding as endless eyes stared upon the two of them in incredulity. Why would he sacrifice their lives for her? A girl that he had originally forsaken...

"Let's us three get a bit more acquainted before I vomit," The high-pitched voice interrupted them, and he was walking, grabbing her hair so hard her scalp stung, pushing her rapidly forward, captor and captive coming closer and closer to Bruce's still body. Rachel felt the terror grow, the possibility that he may not make it through this night alive along with herself sending images of horror through her mind. What would Gotham do with its masked vigilante dead? What would it do with its second D.A. dead within days?

As if he were reading her mind, the Joker giggled again, turning her head and thrusting his knife from her delicate skin to the air before him.

Bruce was inches away from the knife that gleamed with blood-lust in the Joker's hand, his still frame eyeing the blade that ran its way along the side of his cheek,

"Wanna know how I got these scars?"


	5. Dementia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crisis brings transformation.

Bruce's gaze never seemed to falter, even as the Joker stood before him, his knife running along the outline of his cheek, the pressure hard enough to break skin at any moment. Rachel was transfixed, staring at that sharp object, dread filling her as she realized what could happen within seconds if the psychopath was anymore provoked, if Bruce said anything remotely justifying his butchering.

But this is the Joker's provocation…he may just kill him no matter what. Unless I play along his rules…

Could she prevent this? By the heat of the man's breath behind her, suddenly flaming and wickedly excited, Rachel bit the inside of her cheek and wondered if his perverse desire for blood couldn't possibly be stopped. Bruce's defiance was what triggered this; maybe, if she protested, she could get him out of this alive.

"Bruce, please," Rachel murmured as her sadistic captor continued to trace invisible lines along her oldest friend's face, as if selecting which part to carve away first, to make gush with downpours of blood, "Please just let me go. Please."

Couldn't he see what his defiance was doing? Of course she would never give into the Joker's provocations when they were alone, when it was only her life at risk. But with all these people watching with bated breath, these people who included her dearest friend, his life or death weighing in the flick of a bloodthirsty criminal's wrist…

They needed to give him control. Satisfy him, and no one would get hurt.

Except herself, of course. But at the moment it didn't even seem to matter.

"Please, Rachel," The dark-haired vigilante replied, his voice unnervingly calm even with the knife scratching at his cheek, "I've dealt with much worse than some psychotic clown—"

All she could hear for a fleeting instant was her own strangled cry as Bruce's head fell backwards against the seat, a gush of red flying through the air as blood flew across his left cheek. Laughter pierced the air; loud, maniacal, ecstatic. The Joker's tongue flicked across his mouth as if to satisfy the thirst in his black eyes, and Rachel was unable to hide her panic, her chest heaving, her body trembling against the firm fist clenched in her hair.

"Bruce! Bruce, stop it, please! You don't have to do this—just let me go!"

"Oh, but we're all just having so much fun!" The Joker protested with another bark of laughter, his eyes taking in the fright that now etched her face as if it were sweeter than the blood that coursed across Bruce's cheek, "Why Brucey-boy is looking better than ever, he's so eager to just put a smile on that serious face! And anyway, he was being rude, interrupting my story! Let's teach him some manners, shall we?"

With another lightning-swift jerk he whipped around and Bruce's sharp intake of breath was all that filled Rachel's ears. Her eyes widened as she saw another line of red, just below the gash upon his cheek, trailing and dribbling across his neck, spotting the white of his suit coat with blood. Bruce didn't seem fazed—he clutched onto the side of his face with a defiant glare, even while Rachel felt as if she would collapse at any moment, felt the dread emanating throughout the room in waves. The Joker was chuckling, wiping the bloodied knife against a green sleeve,

"Now, now, Brucey-boy, you're looking a tad sloppy. Wouldn't want to, ah…bleed us all of your charming good looks."

He raised his brows as he spoke, the mocking leer an upturned gash against his white face. Rachel's mind couldn't function against the panic; she pushed forward against the Joker's grip, senselessly, only wanting this to stop, and found herself snarling in bursting fury as the Joker's hand merely clenched with harder force upon her hair and pulled her so roughly she felt as if her neck would break.

"Stop it, you prick!" Rachel hissed against the obvious pain in her voice; an entire half of Bruce's face was drenched in blood, now, red and slippery.

With a bitterly amused glance in her direction, the Joker cackled to her shivering form as if they were sharing their own personal joke. And in a way, they were—they both knew that Bruce would die, convinced to let her go or not. They both knew that he had signed away his own fate by his protests, by his intimate relationship with Rachel, and because of this realization she felt a soft whimper tug at her lips with unconscious force. He heard it—his ears seemed to perk and his twisted grin widened, yet his attention was still rapt upon the blood that coursed along Bruce's wounded face, as if carnally absorbed by the stream of red.

She couldn't take this anymore. Rachel began to fear she would scream in pure, frustrated terror, in the rage that boiled in her heart, seething over with her desire to put an end to Bruce's suffering and hurt this man that was wreaking havoc upon the people she loved.

"Oh, no, no no no no-ooo! That's not how you beg, Rachel, that's not how you do it at all. You see, I don't stop. I never stop," A glint in his eye as he spoke, twirling the knife in his hand as if considering which area of Bruce's face to slash at next, "I could just go on doing this forever, you see, because I enjoy it so very much! Batman is always the one to stop all my fun, you know..."

Eyes wide and excited, he leaned forward, and she could imagine his hot breath on Bruce's face. Rachel watched with unshed tears as the Joker loomed so close to the unmasked vigilante that when he raised his knife again to Bruce's unharmed cheek, it was already digging painfully into his flesh, breaking at the surface of skin,

"But he's not here right now, is he?"

His voice was almost a whisper as he spoke the words, and for one horrible instant Rachel thought the Joker knew that the man he was torturing was Batman. But that couldn't be, if only because it was too horrific to imagine. Bruce was still sitting as still as possible, their eyes boring into the other's in the most primal of loathing,

"Is he?!" The Joker barked, then, and cut another gash across the previously unharmed cheek, thin and long and dripping.

He pulled himself from Bruce's form, snickering at the flash of pain in the man's eyes while turning again to examine the blood splattered upon his blade, as if it were an object of his proud handiwork. Rachel watched him as he gazed upon her from the corner of his eye, unable to contain the fear and white-hot anger that flashed across her face. She spoke, then, hating the Joker for what she was forced to say, for the words of false comfort that tugged upon her lips,

"Just let me go, Bruce…it's okay. Batman will come. Batman will save me."

A giggle burst from the upturned, sneering mouth, and he wiped the blood of his blade on Bruce's pant leg, the bleeding vigilante's lip curled as if he ached to lash out right there and then. He gazed relentlessly into Rachel's eyes at her words, his face unreadable even if unmarred by blood; indescribable, the powerlessness that lay there, like nothing she had ever seen upon a face that had always been in so much control.

"That's right, beautiful," The Joker crooned in mock agreement, his knife upper-cutting the air as if in a salute, "The Batman will come and save us all! Just like how he saved Smarvey Harvey, wired to those bombs. Just how he saved you on the other end!"

Another private joke, a vicious irony gleaming in his eyes as he jabbed the knife towards her with his final, painful words. They cut her like no physical attack could cut, its serrated edge infectious and stinging as it tore through her. Bruce watched her uneasily, now, as she felt the betrayal returning, unwanted and unbidden, to her mind, burning in the back of her throat. It intermingled with the panic, so dreadfully wrong yet so strong amidst her mind's disarray.

He knew, now. He knew the Joker had told her of his decision to save Harvey and let her die—she could see it in his desperate stare, in the blood-caked pleading, could feel it in the way her heart wrenched stubbornly amidst the fear she had just suffered for him. And yet he was the one suffering, now, the one being tortured, the one so desperately in need of help it almost disgusted her.

Anger—for who? Anger towards the Joker, who was hurting them both now; she, mentally, him, physically? Or anger returning from its dormant state, aimed towards Batman—Bruce? But it wasn't the time for that, for those emotions that the Joker stirred with his barrage of truths, it wasn't right for her anger to come at Batman of all people, when he was sitting before her, being victimized. When they needed him.

"Batman did save me," She found herself hissing in protest, unable to contain her anger any longer, "And he'll make sure you get yours."

The Joker watched her, his face darkening for a moment, then upturned in a series of excited giggles,

"Really?! Well clearly he's abandoning you all at the moment, hmm?"

He turned towards her, forgetting about Bruce; just as she had intended, his blade slicing in a diagonal arc through the air, dangerously close to her body, "Not so confident when the Bat isn't here to defend every little powerless person in this room, eh? Where is he now, flying about and waiting to pick up the bodies once I'm finished?! Even…" His laughter had been bubbling and was too strong to be contained, now; he paused and brought the back of his hand up towards his mouth, as if to curb his hysterics, "Even the police force is locked up here, defenseless and stupid! We need a—a bat to save us, a criminal just like me! And he's not even here—hilarious!"

He clutched upon his torso, doubled over with laughter—Rachel writhed in his grip, fighting the urge to kick him right then and there. Bruce was growling in anger at the Joker's words, at his insults, at his taunts; and it was then that the heavy doors began to shake and shudder, angry slamming and shouting on the other end. A wrenched cry of hope twisted in Rachel's throat as she stared at the double doors, heard the determined shouts on the other end.

The Joker himself stopped laughing, head snapping upwards as he paused to glare at the doors with furrowed brows. The pounding continued, some strong force on the other end—a heavy object, a projectile of some sort—threatening to break the hinges apart. Gasps and cries of desperation flew across the crowd, and the madman who had been interrupted yet again began to scowl.

"Seems my party has to be put on hold," He hissed in annoyance, appearing sincerely disappointed, "Well, you've all been a wonderful crowd, but more victims are beckoning, and—oh, Brucey, why the long face?"

Rachel gasped at the Joker's words as realization struck her like a blunt force. This wasn't over.

'Of course not.'

There were still a few minutes before the SWAT team undoubtedly behind the doorway could get through—he would have his fun, and he would make sure it killed. With a growl, Bruce kept his gaze still as the Joker skipped towards him; the smuggest smile perched upon his face,

"You see…I wasn't finished with my story! But I'll tell it a little differently—the short, altered version of it, since we're running low on time and, you know, you've been such a good little guest." He patted Bruce's cheeks, staining his gloves red, the force of contact stinging against Bruce's bleeding face, and raised his knife to the side of his mouth.

Rachel's body froze; she whimpered openly, now, pleading quietly. God, she was pleading.

"No," She hissed quietly against the Joker's seemingly oblivious frame, "No, no, no!"

He ignored her, so wrapped up in his own pleasure, as he cleared his throat theatrically and began to speak,

"I got these scars…when I was a, ah, younger lad. I worked night-shift jobs for bosses like Maroni, I was so...desperate for some money for my family, for my abusive parents. But the boss didn't like me, I'm afraid, because whenever he'd try and get me to listen to him, I'd be so…disrespectful, so bitter and angry and always frowning. And so, he pinned me to a chair, tied me up real tight, and he brought a butcher knife to my face. And he said, holding the knife in my mouth—"

He then pressed the knife against the inside of Bruce's mouth, Rachel's body quivering so violently she felt her knees would give in at any moment. Bruce was still quiet, making no sign of fear whatsoever—the Joker nodded, grinning, and began to bark,

"Why so serious, boy?! And then he flicked the knife in my mouth and said, I just want you to smile, so smile!—And he stabbed me right…here!"

With breakneck speed, the knife flew from Bruce's mouth to stab straight into his chest, twisting and ripping a diagonal line across his torso.

'No.'

"No! Bruce! BRUCE!"

Rachel could do nothing but scream, her eyes wide and her mind panicked beyond coherent thought. She screamed and screamed as Bruce slumped against his wired seat, his eyes glazed, hands grabbing at his torn torso as if to hold the blood back that seeped and oozed thickly across his reddened shirt; screamed as the Joker laughed hysterically even then, throwing her backwards across the floor and rushing across the room just as the door began to break open and the SWAT team rushed through; screamed even long after the he disappeared, the wire bombs found and cut away.

The room had been spinning, sickeningly, violently fast; she remembered scrabbling for him as they pulled him away, the never-ending scream tearing through her mind, her body, never seeming to stop, even when her throat was raw and she was gathered up in an incoherent pile on the ground.

Weak, her mind hissed darkly amidst the flickering of her consciousness, as she clutched upon her shaking knees, Bait. Nothing but bait.

Hands were pulling her to her feet—just hurt me too, just cut me up, cut me up like all the rest—carrying her across the room that was now empty, forlorn.

Her body felt limp and lax against Gordon's grip. She remembered watching the stretcher that carried Bruce's body along the same path as it wheeled quickly across the hall, the people pulling him frantic and shouting—with a slow, jerky movement she held her hand out to the stretcher that was now gone, held it out even as it grew smaller, smaller in her rampant thoughts, before swallowed up completely by the darkness of another possible collapse. Gordon was holding her more firmly, then, shouting garbled words into her ear; 'it's all right now, it's okay, everything will be fine, you need to lie down and recuperate you need to rest—'

She wouldn't let Gordon take her anywhere. Rachel remembered shaking her head adamantly at all of his pleas, his coercions, even when he took her to the hospital despite this, sitting her down and talking as calmly as he could.

Somehow she found she was conscious, now, somewhat alert. It had felt like a dream, but it wasn't, not when it hurt so badly. When did they get here? What time was it? She was shuddering beneath the penetrating cold, the chills that swept her spine, struggling to focus, to adjust to the world of sanity, of clarity.

She had a blanket wrapped around her. She didn't know where it came from. All she knew was that it was suddenly heavy, suffocating, scorching on her skin. Gordon was sitting at the chair near hers, in the hallway just near the room Bruce had been taken into, watching her with earnest sympathy, his hands running across his hair, his face, glasses askew against his hands,

"Bruce will be fine, Rachel. He'll need some time in the hospital, of course, but it will only be a little while. He'll refuse to stay any longer than a day. He's a strong man. There's nothing to worry about."

He patted her hand carefully, a smile plastered upon his worry-wrinkled eyes. Rachel could see the hypocrisy behind that gaze; the unspoken words, the lingering sense of betrayal that even she still felt.

'Batman didn't come save us because Batman is the one who being tortured. Even vigilantes can bleed, can nearly die. Even they can be powerless…'

Gordon sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose at her lack of response. She felt like a criminal, being interrogated—first Bruce, now this. She found herself tracing empty patterns along her blanketed lap, imagining that knife that had been in his hands so shortly before, memorizing their movements, their strokes…

'Chill isn't the same. He never was. He didn't go after your loved ones, Bruce, after slaughtering your parents.'

Mentally she chided him, though she knew he would never hear; her fingers still traced the invisible patterns of knife lines against the beige surface, imagining the solid mass as skin; stark-white and bloodied by her touch. He'd never be able to hurt anyone again, never be able to cause them all so much pain.

'If Chill hadn't stopped at your parents, Bruce…if he had gone on slaughtering Alfred, myself…'

Her fist clenched and struck the wall behind her, so abruptly and forcefully that Gordon jumped upwards. For a sickening moment, Rachel felt a vicious satisfaction, imagining her undoubtedly bruising knuckles as that knife striking the final blow in that hideously mirthful face, putting it to silence.

Beautiful, wonderful silence.

"Gordon. "

She was whispering, the edge of desperation in her voice surprising her. When had she sounded so…sickly, as if her voice were wrenched in a sob?

The Commissioner stiffened for a moment, eyeing her warily. Of course, he would have reduced any of her actions now and in the past hour as hysteria; by-products of chaos, panic, shock. Maybe it was hysteria that shook her now, that unnerved her to the point of terrible, violent urges.

'I was never this way…I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never wanted—I just wanted justice, didn't I? What is this? What do I do to someone I can't prosecute, someone who won't stop…'

She knew the answer. Her blood sang it in her veins, hardened with adrenaline. Her mind, twisted and distraught, assaulted her with images of cold, raw vengeance, of blood and fire and destruction, ending the cries and screams of Gotham with the crying of the Joker himself…

Impossible. Yet she ached for it. She needed it, more than ever, needed to know that Bruce's wounds could be reciprocated. That Harvey's body, lost and destroyed, could be justified with another body destroyed in its wake. Of course she wouldn't be strong enough, of course it wasn't the right thing, especially in the exhausted eyes of the man before her. The tortured Commissioner, hurt because he couldn't do what even Batman refused to do, could never end the suffering that gripped Gotham in its unrelenting fist because they could never end the lives of those who threatened it—

The words formed on her lips before she could stop them.

"I can't sit here anymore. I can't sit here and wait for him to kill again, to massacre everyone with all of us just doing nothing…"

Her plea was stopped short. Gordon interrupted swiftly, his worry intensifying at what could only be, on her part, sudden dementia,

"Waiting is all you can do, Rachel. You're the newest D.A., of these criminals would be after you. Of course you'd be afraid. We'll move you to a new location, we'll protect you."

Rachel's nails dug into the arm of her chair, pressing her body weight against its surface. How many people would she have to persuade to take her seriously, to not interpret her words as a sign of panicked weakness? How many people would keep labeling her as needing protection, when her life truly had no matter in the balance of Gotham's fate? D.A. was a position that was interchangeable, its title bearers easily replaced—Batman was not. Commissioner Gordon was not.

If anything, Harvey's death had been expected, soon enough. There was never a D.A. that lasted long in Gotham. Hers would be expected as well—mourned even less. Almost harmless, in the darkest way possible.

She wanted to protect them. If she had to, she would sacrifice herself. She would fight back with the inevitable outcome that she would die. What other choice did they have?

'When everything goes according to plan, you're all happy with your bloodshed.'

The high-pitched voice haunted her thoughts, thoughts that lay curled within her subconscious like a snake slithering through cranial nerves, adamantly coiled no matter how desperately she tried to rid herself of its presence.

"I don't want to be protected," Rachel found herself saying, her frustration seeking the proper words to embody even as it threatened to seethe and burst, "I'm not the one needing protection. Can't you see, Gordon? Can't you see what he's doing? We'll give him what he wants, and he'll stop, and it will be okay again. If I don't give myself up, then Gotham will continue—"

"Rachel, you're not in the best state of mind right now. We have it under control; we're not going to give into this madman. Just calm down, and relax. You don't need to die for anyone."

He had interrupted her again, waving her frantic words away as frivolous overreaction. She squeezed her eyes shut and gnashed her teeth together in her mouth—in the back of her mind, she heard mocking, cruel laughter. By this time she was sure her little conversation with Gordon was attracting curious onlookers, yet she didn't really care.

She would be leaving here soon; anyway, she would be going back to her apartment. Yes, she was going to go back, uncaring if the Joker knew her address, consciously blindsided by the anger which she knew was crippling her. Bruce would have been shaking her by now, if he wasn't lying inert in the room across from their hunched bodies, telling her she was foolish, that she needed to get a hold of herself.

'Get a hold of yourself.'

But what was there left to get a hold of in the first place?

"You're right," She said suddenly, her eyes fixed upon the closed door of Bruce's room rather than Gordon's face, "I don't need to die. I can always defend myself."

Before the meaning of her words could register, she continued, holding a feeble hand out as if to beg. Her words, however, came out in aggressive command,

"The best thing you could do right now, is give me your gun."

Rachel was silent after, her eyes flicking towards his to gauge his reaction. Gordon paused and stared at her, incredulous. It was almost funny, the way he looked at her, as if she were a child who wanted a bazooka for her birthday.

"Rachel, you're in shock right now. You're not capable of making any rational decision, we both know this. If I did that—"

"Do you want another dead D.A.?! Do you want me to be defenseless if he finds me?! Your police force is useless now, filled with mobsters. Give me your gun!"

Her voice was a roar; passing nurses were staring, some visibly panicked by the mention of "gun." Gordon snapped his head and glared at the surrounding hospital personnel, causing them to immediately quiet and look the other way.

Deep down, he knew she was right. He had to agree. There would be no way Gordon could ensure her protection, especially with crooked cops running about, acting as double-agents for the mob. Yet he still protested, still used his feeble logic, if only to prevent another death he was powerless to stop.

"Rachel, this isn't the best course of action…we both know that. Even if some of my men are…questionable in whom they're working for, it's better to take that chance than to have you unguarded and handling a gun you may not even know how to use."

"Really?" She asked automatically, as if her mouth were mechanically controlled by her own bitterness, "Is that how it worked for Harvey, too, when your men wired him up to all those oil drums?"

As she said this, one of the two policemen that were pacing quietly near Gordon froze. Rachel could make out the way her mouth twitched, the way her head lowered. Officer Ramirez, wasn't it? Gordon, unaware of the officer's sudden sign of discomfort sighed heavily and watched Rachel through the slits between his hands,

"Listen, Rachel. I'd appreciate it if you didn't insult my officers, even if I don't currently know which ones are loyal. We're doing the best we can to sort them out and I don't need your goading because it certainly won't boost our morale or make it any easier. Now, I understand that you're afraid, because we're all afraid…but we're not going to do anything we'll regret later. We need to keep things rational in an irrational time."

He watched her with desperation, silently begging her to concede to his words. Her insides wrenched painfully as if being squeezed to the point of implosion. Slowly his hand pushed forward to curl her outstretched fingers shut, yet she flinched and pushed her hand away before he could touch her. Rachel didn't need any comfort in the face of this new rejection; it failed to change anything.

"I'm sorry, Rachel."

Gordon patted her shoulder, as if still aching to touch her, as if it were some act of repentance on his part for all the tragedies they had just suffered. He pulled himself to his feet and began to walk down the corridor, his weariness evident in the slow-paced slouch of his steps. She was alone, now, sitting in front of Bruce's room, waiting impatiently for her chance to hear that he would be all right.

She just wanted to see him.

She buried her face in her hands, struggling to maintain her battered composure, if only to think through what she could possibly do next. She was unarmed, Batman was temporarily gone, Gordon was uncooperative, and she could either sleep in the hospital or in her apartment…two places which both lay exposed and unprotected despite any amount of officer stationed before them. The only safe place was Bruce's home, and even Bruce wouldn't be there tonight.

And I can't trust anyone anymore to help me. All Gotham cares about is saving its own hide.

In her panic, the words of a madman's reasoning resonated through her head, that slithering snake coiled deep within her hissing its venom within her mind, words that could never possibly make any coherent sense,

'You're all out for yourselves, but you don't really know it yet, not until you're put in a situation.'

God, there was no escape, was there?

Footsteps stopped before her, and she caught the sight of the navy blue of a uniform. Rachel's breath hitched; she swept her eyes upward, and at Ramirez's expressionless face her body stiffened, a snarl at the edge of her voice,

"You—"

"Listen," Ramirez said quickly, raising her hands and lowering her head to Rachel's level, her voice deathly quiet, "I know you know what I did. And as much as you may want to scream at me right now, tell Gordon all this shit was my fault, I'm telling you right now that I had no idea what was going to happen and I didn't mean to do it…"

"Didn't mean to do it? You didn't mean to get my fiancée killed?" Rachel shot back, her voice just as quiet as Ramirez's yet edged with sharp hostility.

The female officer sighed in obvious exasperation, though Rachel couldn't quite figure out why she could expect anything else from her at this point. Did she want her to accept her apology, to wave it off and laugh like it was a misunderstanding? Just to clear her pathetic little conscience, despite the life her actions had cost?

"Look, I didn't know the mob and…and…" Ramirez stopped short at the Joker's name, choosing to side-step it, "him, were going to hurt you two. I swear. I just…he threatened me, and—"

Her words fell mute on Rachel's ears. She could feel the murderous glare without even willingly inflicting it upon the crooked cop; it was a habit, now, to glare like this. Only a week ago she would have smiled at everyone, at all the people she had always assumed to be trustworthy, kind-hearted. Funny how things could twist themselves so quickly.

"Cut the crap," Rachel sighed instead, and went to lower her head dismissively, "Nothing you say can justify all this. Gotham is upside-down and you're one of the reasons why."

Ramirez cursed beneath her breath. At first she took it as an angry response to her words, but Rachel was surprised to find the feeling of cold metal against her fingertips. Her head snapped upwards to meet the woman's gaze, which was expressionless as she pushed the gun into the D.A.'s lap.

"Just take this as an apology for something I can't fix. And if you still want to rip my face off…then feel free."

Rachel gripped the gun and pocketed it in her overcoat before any passing eyes could see; within an instant Ramirez had her back turned and was walking away, as if their conversation had never happened. A twisted snarl of both bewilderment and hatred grazed the back of her throat.

The cowardly bitch. Helping her only to clear her own name.

'Once a crooked cop, always a crooked cop.'

Yet at the moment, it didn't matter. She had a gun. Her thoughts became a little calmer, a little less mangled and chaotic, a little more hers again. As the D.A. traced the solid form within her jacket, she waited with renewed patience for her admittance into Bruce's room. She would sit out here all night, if that's how long it took her.

For now, she was a little less defenseless.

A little less afraid.

And when the night was over, she would have her little chat with the Joker.


	6. Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Like I'm a barking dog before its owner strikes it. Like a child, talking out of turn.'
> 
> No, that wasn't how it was going to be. She wasn't going to be the lesser of the two, especially when he was in her apartment, struggling as always to make her afraid. To be in control.

"Hey, you."

It sounded pathetic coming from her lips, but as Rachel stared down at Bruce's moon-pale face against the equally white sheets of his bed, laying her fingers upon a scarred cheek, it was the only thing she could really say. He responded with a quiet grunt at first, opening his eyes lazily to gaze up at her—then, with dawning consciousness and recognition, a smile tugged at his handsome features.

She bit back a laugh as Bruce moved himself upwards, as if making to hug her, and frowned at the realization that he was hooked to hospital equipment. Even when he was injured, he still tried to be the powerful one—the damn showoff. God, she had missed him so much in those horrific hours she thought she had lost him. If Rachel were younger, more naïve, perhaps, she would be crying right now, yet she knew better. Her heart was too hard at that point; and anyway, crying in front of the Batman seemed a tad childish when the thought crossed her mind.

Instead of struggling against his bonds, Bruce settled for a fleetingly calm smile,

"Hey, Rach."

He was probably sedated, he seemed so peaceful. When was the last time he had called her Rach?

She mirrored his grin despite herself, hovering over his still frame with her arms crossed casually before her,

"It's about time you woke up. You were worrying us."

He rolled his eyes playfully, innocence bursting from each movement he made.

'Like a child.'

He seemed so vulnerable, then…a child vigilante, so secure in his undying hope for the world. In the hope that she had once had, just as strongly as his own, before it died away within a week. Maybe she hadn't quite believed in the world as much as she would have liked to admit. But when he spoke again, she felt compelled for one moment to share his beliefs, his playfulness, his naivety, if only because she had just been so close to losing him.

"Please. A few…flesh wounds aren't enough to bring me down. You know that."

He was rustling against the sheets of his hospital bed as he spoke, as if struggling to find a comfortable position. She could see the restless twitch in his eyes, could read his extreme aversion to being held captive in this room under caretakers that were not Alfred, something he would have openly disputed had his wounds not hindered his consciousness. Rachel fought the urge to stare at his torso, where she knew the wound that could have nearly killed him lay, wrapped up beneath layers of bandages.

Would it simply become a long scar, another in the vast collection of the canvas of pain and never healing wounds that was the body of Bruce Wayne—of the Batman? When would there be a time when one of those wounds was final, never able to be sealed by artificial means, bleeding forever until Batman was bled dry?

She didn't want to know. She didn't want to *have* to know.

"Yeah," Rachel lied jovially, her eyes meeting his, drawing some sort of comfort from his steady gaze in only the way his gaze could, "I know, Bruce. I know."

She reached out and clasped his hand tightly, as if wanting to feel the substance of him, the solid mass that was his body, intact and alive.

"How much longer are you going to stay here?" She asked him quietly, knowing the answer before he said it.

Predictably, he took her worried face in and smiled again, reassuringly,

"Tomorrow morning, then I'm gone."

"Bruce, you mean to recover for a week in your mansion?"

Her words were skeptical, and he could sense it. She had her head turned, if only so she wouldn't have to see the pang of guilt in his face at her immense worry,

"You know I can't sit still for a week. Not when we have lunatics running across Gotham, without anyone to protect it."

'Damn his stubbornness.'

She sighed wearily, her fingers tightening on Bruce's hand. He was being ridiculous, but she was accustomed to it. It was only when she had actually seen him as weak, in a state near death, that she had taken her desire to persuade him to be rational more seriously.

"Bruce, you didn't have to protect me earlier tonight. You could have gotten out of this unharmed."

Bruce's soft smile faded; he watched her now with a more penetrating stare than before, as if struggling in vain to read her thoughts. Rachel's head was turned, yet she felt him burning through her, felt his guilt in rippling waves. It wasn't right for a man as wounded as he to feel guilt for something that had already passed between them, despite how much it jarred their relationship when she was reminded of it.

'The fact that he betrayed you in wanting to save Harvey.'

But he didn't betray her…it was only the logical choice, wasn't it? Gotham's welfare taken into account, mind over heart…

'And you still wish he wouldn't have come for you. So who is there to blame?'

"Rachel, look at me."

She hesitated; yet after a long pause, her eyes met his. She couldn't hold his stare for long. It had always been hard and glittering and filled with emotion, but now it stung her to look at him, at the thin scars that decorated his cheeks, eventually to dissolve into white traces of their present ugly gashes, at the hope that still marred his eyes like the deadliest of wounds on his crumbling being.

Rachel could predict the words that would flow from his mouth, jumbled together almost incoherently from the turbulence in his mind. Bruce had never been one to be eloquent in his speech, regardless of his high status and billionaire-playboy reputation. He may be smooth in some topics of conversation, but when it came to voicing his emotions, it hurt her to think of the way he would strain himself.

"Let's forget about what happened."

She stared at him in genuine surprise, watching him struggle to explain his course of actions in seeking to save Harvey, and failing. But he shouldn't explain himself—it was too painful to speak of, to linger on, especially during chaotic times like these. And anyway…why would he logically save her, if she was so…expendable?

'Stop thinking like that, damn it. Why torture yourself when a psychopath has already been screwing with you and your life?'

But it was difficult not to, especially with the full weight of Bruce's stare crushing her.

"Forget?" She found herself asking, a little grin playing on her lips, "Forget what, now? I remember nothing from the time I walked in, Bruce. Don't be silly."

She did it for his expense, even when her heart still stung from the previous…events she had experienced. It was hard to forget when the guilt still swam behind Bruce's dark eyes, when her memories haunted her as strong as if they were solid and real, when Harvey still haunted the back of her mind, ultimately gone and destroyed, never to return.

She wasn't going to lose Bruce, too. She wasn't going to let her life collapse in on itself, taking others' with it. The gun was heavy in her pocket, now; Rachel welcomed the feeling, knowing soon she would be rid of its weight.

"I guess I'm going to let you rest, now. Don't strain yourself. I'll see you tomorrow."

With a quick, chaste kiss upon her friend's forehead—not for Batman, but for Bruce, who lay deep beneath the vigilante's healing body, she turned on her heel and began to walk out. Bruce's hand shot out to grab her elbow, squeezing it quickly as she walked away and forced herself to shoot a small smile over her shoulder.

But as she walked through the doorway, she paused at the frame, doubting he could hear the question that had plagued her all night,

'Who's going to protect you when you need it the most?'

***

As she shut and bolted the door to her apartment, she seriously began to question her sanity. Rachel pulled the gun from her overcoat, gazing intently at its sleek surface, wondering exactly how the morning would play out. She was exhausted, however—too exhausted to indulge in such grandeur thoughts as living or dying, of ending Gotham's suffering, of Bruce's pain.

In one hand, she dug out her cell phone, throwing it carelessly upon a desk. She would need it tomorrow to call Harvey's phone which the Joker had maliciously stolen, would need it to bring him to her for their long-awaited "chat." She would use her gun like a coward, she knew, because although she had stood up to many tense situations before, she knew the Joker was manipulative and smart, not some stupid thug out to claim her life.

She couldn't afford to talk to him for long; she was afraid of the repercussions. It wasn't her body—

She was afraid for her mind.

With a sigh, Rachel changed from her tattered black outfit to a simple nightgown, double and triple-checking the bolted door for consistency. Everything was in order, as she pressed the gun securely to her chest, hugging it like a teddy bear, and settled into her small bed. She was safe as long as she wanted to be, at least for tonight.

When she finally drifted off into sleep, she didn't expect it to be an extremely short one.

***

"Hello, sunshine. It's about time. I've been wai-ting."

Rachel was sprawled across the couch when she heard the voice.

She froze completely, momentarily blind in the pitch blackness of her apartment, yet her eyes managed to make out the shape of the intruder directly across the couch from where she sat. How did she get to her living room? Her limbs stiffened in instinctive panic yet she jerked them to life as she rapidly scrabbled to her knees and narrowed her eyes at the dark shape.

His words were a mere whisper, yet they still held that constant tone of something else, something unsettlingly abnormal. It was as if she could feel the madness quivering within that carefully controlled voice, constantly on the verge of erupting in accordance with his bloodlust. She hadn't expected him to come now, not when she would have called him in the morning, when she would have been ready, prepared—

'That's not how he plays his games, stupid.'

Her fingers darted to either side of her, searching the couch rapidly for her gun, cursing a trail beneath her breath. It was then that she heard a clatter on the ground; saw the magazines sprawled across the floor, the dismantled pistol in the figure's hands as he flipped it from palm to palm, as if weighing it, appraising it. Panic bit at the edges of her body, yet she refused to allow it to seep through and distort her judgment. She refused to care that her gun was on the ground again, just like before, refused to give into the weakness he was crippling her with.

"You could have called, so I'd be able to welcome you, at least."

Rachel was surprised at the solid substance of her voice; almost sarcastic, almost hostile. He raised his head, his face blotted out by the abysmal darkness, yet she could sense the grin that stretched across those scarred lips, taunting and amused.

'Like I'm a barking dog before its owner strikes it. Like a child, talking out of turn.'

No, that wasn't how it was going to be. She wasn't going to be the lesser of the two, especially when he was in her apartment, struggling as always to make her afraid. To be in control.

It seemed an eternity before he replied,

"Well, where's the fun in that? You're so rude, you know, planning on shooting your guests—it's a wonder why you're so, ah…pop-u-lar around the most powerful men in Gotham these days, with that violent streak. I can only imagine how you entertain your…lovers."

His brows rose in the darkness, and she prayed he wouldn't see the way her face twisted at his mocking retort, the way her hand trembled with the urge to strike him. Was he armed? Of course he was; she couldn't be that stupid to think he wouldn't have his endless array of knives in his pockets, his mind a weapon in itself. Slowly, as if bracing for the bite of a snarling dog, Rachel found herself pushing towards the side of the couch, if only to place a bit more distance between the two of them.

It didn't seem to work; she could see, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, his penetrating gaze, watching her consistently, relentlessly. It made her feel dirty, violated, like an object. Self-consciously, she hugged her arms across her chest, the delayed anger sparking within her yet again in response to his presence.

"That's none of your business, is it?" She replied curtly, her irritation affecting the rising inflection in her voice, "Besides, you've been running around massacring all the men in my life, so it's not like I have any options left."

He pretended to consider this, pausing for a moment as he pulled out a short knife, twisting it from side to side with slow, steady movements. For a moment Rachel thought she could see herself in the reflection of the knife's gleaming edge, obviously sharpened with obscene care.

"True, but I'm afraid you'll have to…thank me, for making your life a little more exciting. For making you feel a bit more…a-live."

As he spoke, his knife twisted in her direction, a movement that was threatening despite the distance between them. A lump grew in Rachel's throat as she stood her ground against his mockery, his one-sided logic. She wondered if she would have enough strength in her to lunge forward and turn the knife on him, yet she wasn't a fool; he probably anticipated this, probably welcomed it.

How much longer could she extend her lifespan by simple small-talk? As long as he was the initiator, as long as she feigned interest in his senseless, insane babbling…

"What are you talking about? You've only made it worse. You've made me—"

Her mouth shut forcefully as the word lingered on her lips, as if she were saying too much.

What was she going to say, despite herself?

'Angry? Violent? Vengeful? Spiteful? Want to kill you?'

The Joker's head cocked to one side, lolling almost lazily against his shoulder, obviously rapt with attention to every word that came from his tortured subject's lips.

'Or maybe he's trying to figure out which side of my face to carve first.'

"Made you what? If anything, I'd say I brought you out of hiding."

A smug smirk formed a cut upon his face, fresh and red and bloody in the lack of light. The lipstick almost glowed with the simplicity of his words, words which propelled her to throw herself forward if only to end the talk and commence the slaughter.

'My slaughter, rather than his, because I'm the unarmed one.'

"I'm not hiding from anyone," She replied stupidly, her voice a whisper. It was an automatic reaction, some sort of defense mechanism—utterly foolish in front of such a twisted being, but still instinctively there, if only to defend herself against his barrage of accusations.

Her words aroused a giggle; low and drawn and amused. The knife in his hands gleamed as he ran it across the leather of her couch arm, scratching long lines across its body.

'Impulse, or planned intimidation?'

There was no use in trying to figure it out—the Joker was a damned mystery in everything but his need to kill.

"Really? You're not? You're not hiding behind that stupid title, pretending you don't want to jump from that couch and strangle me this very second? You're not..pretending to enforce your useless high, moral ethics every single day of your life, when you've almost shot me down…twice, now?"

His voice grew more intense as he spoke, the undertone of constant aggression like the hissing of that snake so deeply coiled between her ribs at that very moment. He thirsted to hurt, to inflict pain, just as she wanted to hurt him right then. The thought repulsed her, disgusted her—yet she couldn't deny the parallel urge in his eyes, if more sadistic, more blind and reckless for the madman.

Rachel's fingers bit the leather of her furniture as he continued toying with his knife, carving with a steady hand as if it were flesh. She could see the restraint within the gloved digits, the careful exertion of exact pressure to as not to pierce through the object and tear it apart. It was something he had learned with practice, with skin rather than stronger leather, something much more easily breakable.

"I have a right to want to kill you."

Why was it so difficult to make herself sound a little more sane in front of him? Her words burned as they left her throat, sharp enough to cut the air with her tongue alone. But she couldn't help it; maybe it was the lingering dementia, maybe it was her situation at the moment, of being a fucking captive in her own room. Maybe it was the still-painful loss of Harvey that tore her apart with every forceful breath she took. She couldn't help but be vicious, angry, chaotic.

The knife stopped as it curved upwards to leave more white scars against the leather. In the blink of an eye, its tip stabbed through the arm, the impossibly sharp point wrenched deeply through the surface. She almost expected to hear a scream, to see blood gush from an opened wound. The gloved hands pulled themselves away from the sharp object for a moment, folding with surprising calm across his lap.

It frightened her the most when he was calm. For some reason, it was much easier to shout and verbally argue with criminals, especially the sadistic ones, even to be battered by them physically, than to endure the unresponsive calm this man relentlessly emitted. Calmness meant he was not threatened in the least; it meant he saw himself as in the utmost position of power. It meant he was gathering strength, it meant that all the violence and aggression was boiling within him, to the point of unwanted explosion.

He was in his element, even now. She was playing into his hands, and she couldn't help it.

'Maybe justice is equal to insanity, and he's been the sane one, all along.'

Dark mirth flooded her body, threatened to burst from her lips in sadistic, bitter laughter. She wanted to scream against the urge, knowing her helplessness was what offset this panic, her aggression was what quenched his thirst, what satisfied him. Helpless again. It was almost redundant.

He disrupted her thoughts as his head cocked lazily in the opposite direction, and his eyes bored throughout her in the darkness, two holes of night threatening to devour her.

"Oh, you have every right to want to kill me, Rachel. I…and every-one else who made you suffer. Now, my question is…"

He was leaning forward in her seat, the abysmal eyes looming closer, the snake-like tongue flicking outward momentarily as he spoke,

"…Why don't you? Why don't you just kill the people most responsible for your…Smarvey's death, why don't you bring them your warped little sense of just-ice, because we know Gordon will refuse to? Why don't you just get up and kill me right now… if that's what you really want?"

Unbidden, the provocation jerked life into her limbs. As if on his command, Rachel found herself standing from her position on the couch, eyeing him warily as he continued to sit, as if unfazed by her movements.

A snake, coiled and ready to attack.

She had no weapons. Her eyes darted to the knife wedged along his side for a moment, and he followed her gaze and chuckled harshly,

"That's not how you play the game, girl. You want…to fool me, don't you? To make me think you're less of a defenseless little toy than you actually are?"

The words bit her, sharp and venomous. Her eyes narrowed and she could see his smile widening in the darkness, a glowing jack-o-lantern against the night. She was walking, for some reason; contemplating on whether to take his words seriously, on whether to actually try and hurt him when his knife lay right next to him, when he could reach over and stab her before she could blink her eyes.

'Trap. Of course. It's always a trap.'

"Why didn't you tie me up?" Her voice echoed across the room as she stared at the sitting figure before her with growing suspicion and wariness.

Another chuckle from the darkness, as if it had come from nowhere.

"Why would I tie up my host…unless you preferred it that way?" She could imagine the Joker quirking his brow, a smile playing on his lips, "But I don't need to tie you up to have a chat, do I? No, not for someone as violent as you, someone who reminds me so much of myself. No, you'd be less…cooperative in your restraints."

"I'm nothing like you," She whispered in a low, scathing hiss.

An amused giggle. His black eyes seemed to shine.

"Oh, is that so? Let me tell you something, Miss Dawes. Gordon and the Bat wouldn't kill me if they had the chance, but you—you live for it! This is the only reason you have to live since your dear old Harvey died, your sick, twisted little ob-sess-ion, and don't lie and say otherwise. I can read people better than they can read themselves. And you're just dying to do it right now, aren't you?"

No. He wanted her to nod her head, yet she stood there, unresponsive, realizing he would take her silence as an assent as well. The giggle intensified into a cackle, one of deep, immense entertainment,

"I've got Gotham in the palm of my hand, you know," He reminded her casually, placing his arms behind his head and leaning into the couch, "There isn't a person who doesn't fear me, who doesn't…loathe me in that horribly wonderful way in which they all want to make me bleed."

Pure pleasure coated his voice like sugar; he was practically cooing, the way he spoke, and Rachel could only stand and listen, for once transfixed on this man's sadistic words. He continued after a short pause, raising his head to gaze straight at her—she turned her head away, staring resolutely down at the carpet where her dismantled gun lay, and he giggled at her reaction,

"I love that, the way they try to pretend they're not like…us. Not at our level. But give them a…a…" He gestured down at the battered pistol lying in a black mark against the carpet, "…a gun, or a knife, and see how much they'd love to make me squirm! Does that go with justice, with the Gotham way, miss D.A.?"

He was wagging a finger at her now, the taunting edge to his voice, as if daring her to contradict what he spoke with such astonishing honesty. Because his words rang with such startling clarity in her head, because it disgusted her so immensely to find herself almost…agreeing with him, she began to lose her careful composure, allowing the anger to affect her to all the Joker's delight,

"I'm nowhere near your level, and neither is the rest of Gotham! We don't go around killing just for the fun of it, we don't torment each other and torture and…"

She knew her argument was worthless even when she began to speak. How could she reason with a madman? How could she try and win this useless verbal rapport when this night would end in blood, whether it be hers or—much less possibly—his?

"Oh, but you do. Mentally, you all do—I just don't…inhibit myself. I don't live by rules, because the only sensible way is living without rules. You know how they restrain you, beautiful…you know right now by the look on your face, the way you want to slice me open with my knife and make me just shut up, don't you?!"

His words were a near-shout, ending with a loud, long torrent of laughter. He was reading her mind, reading it through the way her hands were balled against her hips, the way her lip quivered, the way her eyes burned with the lingering image of him still alive before her.

"No," She found herself almost crying stubbornly, uselessly arguing, if only to retain those morals that even now, even she acknowledged as rapidly crumbling before her when she tried her hardest to keep them solid, "No, that's not true! I'm not at your level because I don't kill,and I don't want…"

"No? No?!" A burst of cackling erupted from his mouth, so loud she was frightened the entire apartment building would awaken, "But you just said you wanted to kill me! Oh, you make no sense, Rachel, with your self-contradictions and your stupid stubborn morals that you don't even fucking believe in anymore! All of that shit…all of it died when Harvey died, don't you see? Gotham never had morals. All it had was a fake shell of hope, a chain of human lives that they just fucking sacrifice over and over to try and justify themselves, to try and prove that they're not all animals, that they're just being victimized…"

His excitement was so intense his voice was shaking, a gloved hand gripping the blade of his knife with such tightness she watched as the skin cut into it, red blooming across the white like blood in milk. She was backing away, ever so slowly, struggling with all her strength to distance herself as far as possible without alerting him to her actions. It was the fear that made her do it, so human and flawed and prevailing with every word from his lips.

"That's not true," she repeated again; stupidly, mechanically, like a little sheep, "You're lying…you're…you're craz—"

"Crazy?!" He screamed the word, and in an instant he was on his feet, the couch upturned against the ground, the knife in his bloodied hand. His chest was heaving, and she was still backing away, through her living room and into the kitchen, her eyes wide and her breath heavy.

The fear stained the air, making it tense and suffocating; he seemed to enjoy it, as he walked slowly forwards, the stretching grin intensified by his deep scars,

"I'm. Not. Crazy. I'm the sanest one in Gotham!"

He was walking towards her, his knife in hand; she hit her back against her kitchen table, swearing at the familiarity of it, of being trapped again after backing away—goddamn déjà vu. He chuckled as she gripped the edges of the object that hindered her, realizing just as she did the cruel irony of the situation. Then, he was grabbing her, his speed surprisingly swift—like a snake, and now I can't escape—and she was in his strong grip as if coiled, trapped, his hand squeezing at the delicate muscles in her face, fingers roughly digging into her jaw.

Rachel was staring straight up at him, the rage intensifying, imagining Bruce in the exact same grip, watching the Joker's sadistically amused face and the budding thirst mirror exactly what had crossed it earlier. She wouldn't let him cut her up; somehow, she wouldn't let him see the fear that flickered across her face, jerking her limbs with every throbbing pulse of her heart in her throat.

"Listen to me, Rach-el. I don't like…restraining you like this, myself. But you've brought it upon yourself, like you always do."

'Naughty girl,' his voice taunted soundlessly, 'you deserve to be punished for your disobedience.'

His bloodied finger caressed her lip for a moment, smearing the fluid from his own wound along her mouth. Rachel opened her mouth slightly and wildly thought of biting him; but he saw it in her eyes, withdrew the finger and raised her head so her neck was exposed. Another bloodied digit traced along her throat, leaving another spatter of red like an imprint upon her skin,

"I know what you're thinking right now…you want to fight me, to hurt me. And I can't fathom why you don't DO IT!"

His angry shout filled the room as her head connected with the wall behind her; with a sharp crack she was sliding down towards the floor, her back arched against the cabinets and drawers, her eyes blurred with tears of pain and pure hatred. She was pulling herself to her knees, scrabbling frantically, struggling as she heard his footsteps—yet he was on top of her, now, straddling her, and when she twisted her head up to look at him he was leering down with his painted grin, her hair in his hands.

'Just like before.'

"Now really, what does it take to convince you that your morals aren't going to stop me?! That maybe if your legal system had killed off the mob all this time, your beloved little Har-vey would still be alive? That if the Bat wasn't so pathetically fucking weak…"

He finished his sentence with the point of his knife against her jugular, his shaking laughter causing it to spasm wildly. Its tip stung as it bit against her skin,

"…I wouldn't be about to kill you right now."

He was pushing forward—about to break the flesh, penetrate the vein. The panic rose and possessed her and she couldn't let this happen, not like this.

He was flicking his wrist, a giggle against his upturned, scarred mouth. Rachel shut her eyes and braced herself—

And then she kneed him in the groin.

He collapsed on top of her, yet she was quick enough to roll to the side, pulling herself to her feet and grabbing frantic hold of the closest knife from the sink on her counter. Her hands shook as he pulled himself, growling, to his knees, gazing at her from the corner of his eye. For a sickening moment she was stunned to see him smiling, almost delirious in the ecstasy upon his painted face,

"Now we're talking."

He pulled himself to his feet and lunged for her.

Rachel was fast despite the aching in the back of her head; she sidestepped him as he swiped at her with his dagger, again, licking his lips with open hunger, his eyes wide and lusting beyond reason,

"Doesn't this make you feel powerful, Rachel, the fact that you can stab me any second?! Isn't it exhilarating?"

She held the knife readily in her hand, disgusted at the way it filled her body with adrenaline, at the way she was envisioning exactly where to stab with her instinctual urge for self-defense, even as he circled her like a voracious predator, his eyes more deadly than any carnivorous animal she could ever encounter.

But this was it. She was so close, so close to ending all of this. She couldn't answer him because she didn't know how to respond—yes frightened her, yet it was what she ached to say, and he could see it as transparent as glass upon her tormented face. He was shaking with impatience, now, in the subtle twitch of the way he held his knife, and she gripped hers more tightly in response.

It was then that her doorbell rang.

Her eyes widened, she was taken aback in surprise—the Joker's leer deepened at the noise, and he watched her expectantly, that disfigured grin on his lips,

"Now I wonder who that is, hmm? Who could it be in the middle of the night?"

"Rachel?!" The voice screamed on the other end of the door, the pounding harder, almost frantic.

Her fingers trembled against the knife; the Joker's own grip seemed to slacken, the flint of his soulless eyes glinting with renewed mirth.

It was Ramirez on the other end, and she was breaking in.

Rachel watched from the corner of her eye as her door began to burst opened on its hinges, the lock crumbling under the strength of a few penetrating bullets. Her knife still steady, she found herself backing away again, a reflex not unnoticed by the Joker's cruel, barking laugh. God, that stupid girl couldn't come in now, not when there was a psychotic killer on the loose in her fucking apartment.

"Now…now's not the best time! Go away! Please!" Her voice choked frantically, stupidly, as she glared at the Joker's smug face with crumbling resolve.

Yet the door broke open, anyway, and Ramirez burst into her home, staring wildly about the darkness with her gun before her. She saw both Rachel and the Joker in that instant, her face contorted in some strange, unreadable expression—

And she pointed her gun straight at Rachel.


End file.
